


The Spuffy, the Witch, and the Utility Shed

by bewildered



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/M, crackfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 20:13:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7068370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewildered/pseuds/bewildered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Buffy encounters Spike at her college orientation, the last thing she expects is to be hurtled with him into a demon dimension. Now they must battle together against hordes of unnatural creatures, talking beavers, and… is that a lion?</p>
<p>AU set between seasons 3 and 4. Don’t let the hints of plot fool you, this is mostly just an excuse for some smut. Well, smut and mayhem; it is Spuffy. Written for the May 2016 20th round of Seasonal Spuffy.</p>
<p>With deepest, most heartfelt apologies to C.S. Lewis for the mutilation of his characters and bits of his dialogue. SPECIAL NOTE FOR AO3: This work is Not Kind to the denizens of Narnia. Please, if you are looking for a thoughtful treatment of the world and characters of Narnia, this is emphatically not it, and you should just stop reading now. </p>
<p>A thousand thanks to the_moonmoth for prompting, instigating, egging on, and betaing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Into the Forest

One second Buffy was braced up against the door of the dim storage shed, wondering if the next blow would be the one to shatter the splintering wood, and the next she was falling, falling into brightness. It was a long fall, but somehow light, like she was a feather wafting to earth, and as she fell she could feel things brushing past her bare arms – at first it felt silky-soft, like plush fur, but as she fell the sensation changed, got rougher and somehow prickly, and as the light grew brighter and brighter she could see flashes of deep green, and a pungent smell filled the air about her, like Pine Sol, except somehow not as chemical, and just when she realized the green flashes were tree branches and the smell was in all probability actual, non-chemical pine needles, she landed and found she was standing in the middle of a wood, with snow under her feet and snowflakes drifting about her, the sun shining thinly down through hazy clouds. She lifted her hands to the flakes in a moment of shocked wonder, before reality came crashing down like a block of ice.

Holy crap, it was _cold!_

“Bloody hell!”

She spun to see Spike frantically tugging the collar of his duster up over his head, diving for the shade of the trees, and fury bubbled up inside her. She didn’t know what had happened between them teaming up to fight off the slime demon from hell and this, or where they were, or what was going on, but she was _very_ certain that it was completely, utterly, one-hundred percent Spike’s fault.

“What did you _do_?” she growled at him, snowflake-dotted hands balling into fists for about three seconds before she decided that punching Spike was a slightly lower priority than staying warm, and wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing her exposed skin desperately.

Spike ignored her, peeking cautiously out from the shadow of the leather. “Why’m I not on fire?” he asked hesitantly.

“Really? _That’s_ your first problem with this situation? Not the snow or the trees or the cold or the fact that we’re not in the stupid storage shed expecting imminent death anymore?”

Spike held his hand out into the sunlight, watching it nervously. “Fuck off, Slayer. Pretty sure immolation counts as the priority here.” He wiggled his fingers in the diffuse light “Huh. The sunlight doesn’t burn.” He tugged his duster back down, settling it around his shoulders.

Buffy narrowed her eyes at him. “Spike, do you feel the cold?”

“Not a lick,” he said absently, scanning the trees.

Buffy stomped over to him. “Give. Me. The. Coat.”

Spike glared at her, tugging the lapels closer around his body. “Fuck. Off. You can bloody well freeze to death for all I care.”

Buffy sighed, her voice shaking from the cold. “Spike, we are in an unknown place – probably a demon dimension, if the sun doesn’t burn you – with hardly any weapons, no food, and no idea how we’re going to get back. I am fairly certain we’re going to have to work together if we’re going to survive.”

Spike snickered. “Lovely speech, Slayer. But what you’re really saying is, _you_ need _my_ coat.” He brushed snowflakes ostentatiously off the leather cuffs. “I don’t need bugger-all from _you_.”

Buffy rubbed her arms harder. “ _Spike_. I swear, I’m gonna…”

“Stake me?” He grinned evilly. “Dust me and the coat’s dust too. I thought we were going to _work together_.”

“Fine!” Buffy shouted, stomping her foot in the crunchy snow – thank god she’d at least been wearing boots and jeans! “Keep your stupid coat! I’ll just have to stay warm by beating you up!”

She launched a punch, but the cold was already slowing her down, and Spike danced easily out of reach. “Sorry, Slayer. Think I have an elsewhere to be. I’ll come back later, have me a Slayer-sicle.” He whirled and ran off into the forest, and was gone.

Buffy’s nose was starting to run; she sniffled, curling closer around herself. Why why _why_ hadn’t she worn some _layers_ to orientation? Sure, Sunnydale was always nice and warm in the summer, but she should have planned for the ungodly sight of Spike trying to pick up Harmony, random slime monster attacks, and getting sucked into a demon winter dimension. Crap like that always happened to her. She needed to be prepared next time. She sniffled again. This sucked.

From the corner of her eye she caught faint movement at the top of the trees, and she squinted. Was that… smoke?

Smoke meant fire and fire meant warm, and without even thinking her feet started in the direction of that tiny smudge of grey, not even caring that it was in the opposite direction from Spike.

She was just so _cold_.


	2. Turkish Delight

Once he was certain the slayer hadn’t given chase, Spike settled into an easy saunter through the trees, holding his hand out and admiring its contours in the sunlight. He’d been thinking about how it might feel to walk out in the sun, ever since he’d heard tell of the Gem of Amara, and the thought had been enough to lure him back to bloody Sunnydale despite the presence of the slayer, but he hadn’t really been able to picture it, it had been so long since he’d stood in sunlight. It was pleasant indeed, this little preview; once he found his way back, he was going to make bloody well sure he found the gem, so he could keep the sunshine for himself, enjoy it whenever he wished.

He wondered if he’d freckle.

He was reckoning in his head how many hours it might take for the slayer to freeze to death, when he heard a jingling, jangling noise. Was it keys? Loose change? The sound grew nearer and nearer, and finally he realized it was bells, the annoyingly quaint kind, and as he watched, a sledge burst through a gap in the trees. It was drawn by a pissed-off looking pair of deer and driven by a squat little demon, humanoid, with a long, stained beard.

Riding in the sledge was a woman, wrapped in thick white fur, a golden crown upon her head and a golden wand in her hand; she looked a little like Drusilla, except that her hair was whiter than his own, and for a moment he considered asking her just how she managed to get it that light, because it took gallons of peroxide to keep his own hair the shade he liked it, but then her eyes fell upon him, and something in them made him think she was unlikely to share sartorial tips. More like Darla than Dru, actually, now that he saw the imperious look in her eyes, which cancelled out his earlier good impression.

Plus, a quick sniff told him she wasn’t human, so she probably had some demon trick that wouldn’t work for him. Pity, that.

“Stop!” she cried, and the homunculus at the reins pulled up, until the sledge skidded to a stop right beside Spike. The reindeer managed to look even more pissed off, and the nasty dwarf-demon glared at Spike from under its black, tangled brows before turning to stare stolidly off into the distance.

The white woman looked down her long nose at him. “And what, pray, are you?”

Spike shoved his hands in his pockets and tilted his head to look up at her. “Name’s Spike,” he said insolently, looking her up and down. “And _what_ I am is bad.” He sent her a killing glance through his eyelashes, the one he had perfected over more than a century of unlife hunting women. “So bad I’m good, if you take my meaning.”

Her eyes flamed with either fury or lust. “Is that how you address a queen?”

Now that they were up close and personal, he really didn’t like the look of her. Seemed full of herself. “Queen of what? Cheap fake fur?”

She raised her wand, eyes blazing, and Spike shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, ready to dodge or strike or possibly grope, but then she sank back with a patently false smile and patted the seat beside her. “How cold you look! Come and sit with me, and we shall talk.”

Spike raised his eyebrows sardonically. “Think I’ll stand.” He hadn’t been born yesterday.

The white woman shrugged negligently, as if his refusal was of no matter. “Perhaps something to drink?”

Spike raised his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t say no to some whiskey. Or blood.” He eyed her neck, wondering if she would taste human, or if she’d have a nasty demon-dimension aftertaste.

She pulled a tiny glass bottle from the sleeve of her fur robe, and delicately held it out, letting a single crystalline drop fall to the snow. There was a hiss and a puff of steam, and there where the drop had fallen was a golden cup, encrusted with jewels, full of something steaming and pale and creamy, its surface flecked with spices.

Spike sighed and bent down to pick it up and gave it a sniff.

Warm milk, with a little nutmeg.

He rolled his eyes. “Do I look like I’m twelve?” On closer inspection the cup was cheap brass, and the jewels irregular and fake; he tossed it all behind him.

The Queen smiled beatifically, as if he had thanked her profusely for her generosity, and stepped down from the sledge, her jeweled shoes barely making any noise on the snow. She was taller than him by several inches. “You are right, it is dull to drink without eating,” she said sweetly. “What would you like best to eat?”

“Blood,” Spike said promptly. “But I’d settle for an onion blossom.”

Teeth flashing brilliantly, she let fall another drop from her tiny bottle, and there appeared a covered tray, of the same brass as the cup; Spike lifted the lid and looked at the contents. “What’s this shite?”

“Turkish Delight, my sweet.”

Spike replaced the lid sharply. “Bloody terrible at concierge service, aren’t you?”

She laughed merrily, like ice breaking, and tucked her robe around Spike’s shoulder. “Come with me,” she said softly. “My house is a lovely place, and there are whole rooms full of Tur… er, _onion blossoms_. I am quite sure you would like it.”

Spike eyed her consideringly. “How old are you?”

She lifted her chin proudly. “I have been here since the dawn of Time…”

“’S what I thought.” Spike sighed. “Sorry, love.”

He turned to her and placed his hands on her cheeks, and as her lips parted and she began to sway towards him, he gave a sharp twist and broke her neck.

“I’m afraid you’re too old for my taste.”

Her body crumpled to the snow in a heap of fur, and he dusted off his hands and turned to take care of the nasty coachman - who looked even less appetizing than the white bitch had - but the creature was already scrambling away, fumbling with a brass-bound horn. As Spike stalked him, the dwarf raised the horn to his lips and winded it.

There was an answering horn, and another, and another, more and more until the air was full of the sound of horns, and then foul little demon-dwarves began to appear amongst the trees, hurrying towards their clearing.

“Our Queen!” the coachman cried. “He has slain our Queen!”

As the oncoming horde of homonculi began to growl and shout and snarl, producing wicked-looking knives and cudgels, Spike took a moment to assess the odds.

They were pretty miserable odds indeed.

“Bugger,” he muttered, and took off running.


	3. What Buffy Found

Buffy made her way through the trees towards the little wisp of smoke, occasionally breaking a branch or kicking over a boulder to mark her path, just in case she needed to be where they’d arrived in order to get home. The snow was falling more heavily now - just enough to make the distance hazy and frost her eyelashes - and she was so occupied squinting to try and see further and wiping away snowflakes from her eyes that she almost missed the little half-naked man. Which was actually kind of impressive, since besides being half-naked he was wearing a bright red scarf and carrying a bright red umbrella, and kind of stood out against the white snow.

But in the end she crashed right into him, and he let out a little squeal of surprise. “Goodness gracious me!” he exclaimed, taking a few jogging steps away, then turned and looked back at Buffy measuringly.

He was about the same height as Buffy, and shirtless, which made Buffy feel colder just looking at him; at first glance she thought he was wearing fuzzy pants, but when she looked closer, she could see that he had the legs of a goat, or maybe a donkey? Whatever they were, they were shaggy and furry and… Oh. Oh, _gross._ He was, in fact, _all_ -naked.

“Good evening,” he said in an obsequious tone of voice. “I don’t mean to be rude, but are you a Daughter of Eve?”

“Uh, nope,” Buffy said. “My mother’s name is Joyce.”

“Oh. Oh, no, that’s not at all…” The little goat-donkey-man-demon cleared his throat. “I merely meant… You are, well, a _girl_ , yes?” His ears twitched eagerly, and, ew, was that his tail wagging?

Buffy looked at him askance. “Yeah-huh,” she said drily.

“And… _human_?” His eyes glittered.

“So I’m told,” Buffy said, baring her teeth.

“Quite right, quite right,” he said absently, glancing around nervously. He turned back to her with an ingratiating smile. “My goodness, you do look chilled,” he said kindly. “Perhaps you should like to come and have tea with me?”

Buffy took a step back, narrowing her eyes. “I’m thinking _no_ ,” she said frostily.

He took a few steps closer. “Oh, come now. It’s only just around the corner,” he smiled pleasantly. “There will be a roaring fire, and cake….” He gave her a winning look. “Sardines!”

Buffy casually reached behind her, palming the stake tucked in her waistband. “ _Gosh_ , that’s kind of you,” she smiled insincerely. “But I really have to be going.”

He bustled forward. “If you will just take my arm,” he offered, “I shall be able to hold the umbrella over both of us.” He reached out for her.

Buffy punched him in the nose.

He staggered back, hand flying to his face, eyes wide. “My goodness!” he exclaimed. “Are you… are you... _not fond of sardines_?” He waggled his eyebrows at her, hurrying towards her again, hooves crunching ominously through the snow. He still had an inviting smile on his face, but there was something about his eyes now that was flat and shark-like and altogether unpleasant.

When he lunged at her arm again, Buffy staked him right through the heart.

Not being a vampire, he sank to the ground, blood burbling out to stain the snow as his eyes turned glassy and cold. Snow began to gather on his neat goatee.

“Creepy much?” Buffy grumbled, picking up the umbrella and shaking the snow off. “Like I’m that stupid.” She squinted in the direction he had indicated, hoping he hadn’t been lying about the fire at least…

Huh. What was that atrocious noise?


	4. A Day with the Beavers

Spike followed the trail of ripped branches that the slayer had conveniently left, running at top speed, hoping that the stubby little legs of the dwarves would allow him to outpace them, and that they were stupid enough to lose his trail. Not that he harbored any expectations - more than a century of living life on the edge had cured him of expecting things to go smoothly, _ever_ \- but it would make for a nice change.

In any case, there were demons on his trail, and conveniently there was a specialist in the extermination of demons just a little way ahead - he could tell from the scent of fresh non-human blood that she’d already gotten a head start on the extermination, good on her - and while he knew he wasn’t precisely in Buffy’s good graces, he was at least a familiar face, a familiar face that had teamed up with her on several occasions to fight a mutual foe, and on top of that, he had an excellent bargaining chip.

So when he reached the clearing where Buffy was, for some inane reason, twirling a red umbrella over her head and squinting off into the distance, he pulled up just out of stake’s reach, shrugged out of his duster, and held it out invitingly.

“Here, Slayer,” he grinned, glancing nervously over his shoulder. “Have a coat.”

Buffy dropped the umbrella and shoved her arms into the sleeves, wrapping the leather close around her and shuddering in bliss before giving him a suspicious glare. “What did you do?” she hissed.

“Oh, that’s very nice!” Spike huffed. “Why is it always that I’ve done something? Why can’t it be that I’m an innocent victim?”

Buffy raised her eyebrows.

“Well, all right, I did something,” Spike admitted. “But it’s no more than what you do. Slaying of the demons and all that. The point is, we’re going to have to work together if we’re going to survive.”

Buffy frowned, looking off behind Spike. “God, what _is_ that noise?”

“Perhaps we should find some high ground,” Spike said with another look behind him. “And, um, what weapons do you have?”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “A stake, and an umbrella. I didn’t exactly get to pack for this little vacation.”

Spike shifted to vamp-face. “That’ll have to do,” he muttered, turning to face the rampaging dwarf-horde, which - as expected - had not gotten lost after all. “Heads up, Slayer!”

The first of the dwarves spilled into the clearing, and the battle began.

*

Buffy was going to kill him. She was going to _kill_ him. It wasn’t enough that she’d had to deal with creepy sexual-predator donkey-man – no, Spike had to go and find a gaggle of evil Munchkins and lead them right to her – and she didn’t know what Spike had done to piss them off, but it must have been a hell of a thing, because they were _rabid_.

She managed to stake a couple before they realized she was dangerous, but then her stake went flying, and the damn umbrella wasn’t sharp enough to do any serious damage, so she tossed it aside after a few practice swings. She managed to snatch up the donkey-demon’s red scarf and choke a third into unconsciousness, but the damn dwarves just kept coming, like cockroaches. Spike’s back was to hers, so at least she didn’t have to worry about them sneaking up on her as she punched and kicked and even swung one into a tree by his beard, but when they were done, if they survived, she was definitely going to kill Spike. Especially now that she had his coat.

It was a nice coat. Toasty and warm, and it swung flashily as she fought, making her feel like she was in the Matrix. Very nice indeed.

One of the rabid hobbits came at her with a knife, and she managed to catch his wrist and break it, snagging the knife in midair, and that made all the difference in the fight, because her arms were twice as long as the little creeps’, and after that it didn’t take long before she and Spike were the only ones left standing, small bearded corpses piled around their feet.

Spike turned to her with a grin. “That was brilliant!” he laughed.

Buffy punched him in the nose. “No!” she shouted. “That was not brilliant! That was the exact opposite of brilliant! It was…” _Dark? Muddy? Dull? What was the opposite of brilliant?_ “It sucked!”

Spike rubbed his nose, still grinning. “Well, I had fun,” he shrugged.

Buffy was raising her hands to strangle him when she saw something moving among the trees, and she raised her gore-streaked knife instead. “Geez, Spike! What did you do to these demons, whine about your love life?”

Spike set his back to hers again, scanning the underbrush. “Oh, like you’re one to talk. Angel finally give you the heave-ho? I hear he’s gone off to the big city.”

There it was again, more movement. “I should’ve just let you pick up Harmony. She’d have annoyed you into dusting yourself before you even got around to biting her, and that slime demon would never have even noticed me. But noooooo, I had to save her moronic ass and kick yours across the quad...”

Spike cast her a narrow look. “What, that blonde was a friend of yours?”

“Not a friend. I hate her. She still doesn’t deserve to become your midnight snack.” There! Something had definitely dashed from tree to tree. Something unpleasant.

Spike raised his eyebrows. “Haven’t been in touch lately, have you?”

“Not since graduation.”

“Huh.” Spike smiled evilly. “Got some news for you then, about your little not-a-friend…”

Buffy huffed in frustration. “Just shut up, Spike. I don’t have time to catch up on gossip, what with all your newfound enemies trying to kill us.”

Spike looked like he was about to argue with that, but then a whiskered, furry face popped out from behind a tree, beady eyes glowing a malicious red. The fell beast lifted its paw, and pointed straight at Buffy with a single ragged claw. “Murderer!” it cried, glaring death at her. “You murdered him!”

“Me?” Buffy said, startled. “I didn’t murder… Oh.” She looked back at the body on the ground, the first body, the creepy perv-o goat, now half-buried under dead dwarves. “Oh.”

The furry creature let out an unearthly howl and charged at her, flecks of foam spattering about it.

It was squat and lumpish and covered in wet brown fur, and it smelled like Xander’s basement, and Buffy wondered as she fought it what the hell it was. A muskrat? An earless rabbit? It had buck teeth, sharp ones that it was slashing and biting with, and it looked vaguely rodent-like, but she didn’t think rabbits came without ears, and then it whacked her viciously with its tail, and she realized it was a freaking _beaver_ , except the hugest beaver ever, slavering and snarling and muttering curses, and then she wondered what the hell Spike was doing while she fought the hell-beaver, because she was pretty sure this counted as one of the things they were _working together to survive._

“Spike!” she shouted, slashing at the beaver-demon with her newly-acquired knife. “A little help?”

He moved into her peripheral vision, lighting up a cigarette. “Thought this was something you needed to handle alone,” he said offhandedly. “Seems like the beastie’s got a grudge.”

Buffy rolled her eyes, but not too much because the damn beaver was _fast_ , clawing and biting while it muttered streams of angry nonsense - and how creepy was _that_ , a talking beaver? Did everything in this stupid dimension talk? - and gave the creature another good slice. “Get your ass in the game, Spike!” she bit out.

He tossed the cigarette aside and launched in with a grin, kicking the beaver in the head, and that gave Buffy the opening she needed to slash at the thing’s throat. It let out a final choked gasp and fell to the ground.

“This is the crappiest dimension ever,” Buffy fumed, bending down to scrub her knife off in the snow.

Spike was looking down at the corpse of the demon-beaver with a puzzled frown on his face when she straightened. “Funny thing,” he said slowly. “Something about this world feels strangely familiar. Like I read about it somewhere…”

“You can read?” Buffy sniped.

Spike flashed his fangs at her. “’M a man of many talents, love.”

Buffy rolled her eyes and tucked the knife in her belt. “Whatever. Let’s find some shelter before nightfall.”

*

Buffy gathered up a few more knives from the dwarves’ bodies, tucking one in each boot and the others in the duster’s wide pockets – she really hadn’t enjoyed being without a weapon – and started off into the woods in what she thought had been the direction of the smudge of smoke, because nice as the duster was, she was pretty certain a toasty fire would be even better. Spike followed her, whistling cheerily. After a few minutes, the ground began to slope downwards, and the trees thinned, and they found themselves out in the open air under the shining sun – Buffy noticed that Spike lifted his face to the sunlight with an expression of bliss – looking down at a frozen river that ran along a narrow valley.

There was smoke, a comforting puff of it coming from a structure that spanned the width of the river, covered in icicles. The beaver-demon’s dam.

Spike whistled. “I’ll be damned.”

Buffy elbowed him, trying not to grin at the well-timed pun. “Shut up. It’s shelter, it’s available, and it seems to have a fireplace.”

They carefully descended down into the valley, and Buffy was about to knock on the door when it burst open from the inside and a flurry of fur and teeth and wicked red eyes came barreling out.

Buffy leapt back, barely dodging the assault. “Goddammit! It has a mate!” She slashed at it two handed with her knives.

“Allow me,” Spike laughed – he was having far too much fun, the jerk – and he snatched up the beaver from behind, sinking his fangs into the beast’s throat. It thrashed and twitched and snarled futilely in his grasp.

“EW!” Buffy shrieked, averting her eyes. “Gross, Spike!”

Spike dropped the blooded carcass to the ground, cracking his neck. “What, can’t blame a fellow for having a snack,” he said with a grin, licking his lips. “Not like you weren’t going to kill her just as dead.” He rolled his shoulders.

“Yes, but it’s different,” Buffy pouted, unwilling to admit that he was probably right. “Anyhow, how did you know it was edible?”

Spike shrugged. “It’s kind of a boutique blood back home. Tastes a bit like otter. A tad gamier.” He licked his lips thoughtfully. “Though this one tastes a bit like strawberry jam.”

Buffy sighed. How lame was her life, that she was forced to team up with _Spike_ to fight _demon beavers_. But they were stuck here, until they figured out a way home - or someone else brought them home - and awful as he was, Spike was better than being alone. She supposed he could be useful if there were more nasty critters around, too.

She stomped forward and peered in the door of the little dam-house. “Ooh. Homey.” And there _was_ a fire, with a comfy-looking rocking chair in front of it. The fireplace had some strange symbols painted on the stone, and there was a disturbing collection of rusty bladed implements hanging on the walls, but… Well. It was really freaking cold.

Buffy sat in the rocking chair, stretched her feet out to the fire, and sighed in relief.

Warm at last.


	5. What Happened After Dinner

The demon-beavers’ homey dam turned out to be an excellent base of operations; there was a pantry nicely stocked with bread and jam and cheese and hams, which kept Buffy nicely fed, and there was also a constant stream of vicious talking animals coming to raid Buffy and Spike, which kept Spike grodily fed, and in the meantime it was easily defended, snug and secure and easily locked up at night, with a sturdy bolt on the only door.

The weather started to change almost immediately after they arrived, the snow and ice melting swiftly so that soon the icicles were gone and the river was flowing, a deep pool on the one side of the dam and a merry stream on the other, and flowers were blooming soon thereafter, and it would have really been quite idyllic if it weren’t for the homicidal animals. Well, and the fact that Buffy really hated Spike, even when he was defending her back and making jokes that she didn’t want to find funny. She was starting to find them funny, which fact she found disturbing.

She was probably going crazy. But it wasn’t like she had any choice.

They went every day to check the clearing where they had entered the dimension, but no matter how much they searched they weren’t able to find anything that resembled a portal, even climbing the trees (because of the falling), and Buffy really hoped that someone back home was trying to bring them back, because the demon-beavers had not been much for reading; they didn’t have any books to even try and research. (Well, there had been one book, tucked under the mattress of the little bed, but one glance at the contents had been enough to convince Buffy that it would be less-than-useful in their predicament, and in fact had also convinced her that it should be burned immediately so that she never had to glance at the contents again. _Ew._ )

Things had gotten quite settled and domestic by the time the wolves attacked.

They had heard the howls for a few nights running, unearthly wails demanding vengeance, vengeance for their slain queen, and every night they had made extra-certain that the door was well-bolted, but when the attack finally came it was in broad daylight, just when they least expected it. Which was, of course, when they should _most_ have been expecting it, Buffy berated herself later, but the fact was that they had gotten complacent, and so it was their own fault.

 _Her_ fault. It was her fault.

Spike’s fascination with the sunlight still had not faded, and over the weeks he had managed to find more and more excuses to spend the day outside. At first he made noises about “patrolling” and put on a dramatic show of rattling knives and shifting to his vamp face, but after Buffy caught him lying shirtless on a grassy hill, basking in the sun with a soft, blissed-out smile on his lean face, he had apparently assumed the jig was up, and just shrugged and grinned sheepishly on his way out the door each morning.

Buffy would have mocked him for it, except she couldn’t get the picture of sunbathing Spike out of her head, and was herself managing to find more and more excuses to follow Spike out the door and conveniently stumble across him whilst “patrolling” the grassy hill. Not that she thought he was attractive – not at all! She just had to make sure that he wasn’t sunbathing _evilly_. It was her sacred duty, even if they were just a bit out of her jurisdiction.

It was her responsibility to keep an eye on him, that was all.

She was very, very responsible.

The morning that the wolves attacked, she had waited a scant five minutes before following Spike out the door, because she kept hoping she might stumble across Spike in the actual process of taking off his shirt – he might be taking it off _evilly_ , she reasoned, and if so, she didn’t want to miss it – and he hadn’t even made it out of the valley when she slipped out the door and started up the hill after him.

She only made it a few steps when she was shoved forward into blackness.

There were snarls and growls, and curses, shooting stars in the dark, and Buffy swam feverishly through the darkness trying to grasp at them; they slipped through her fingers like water, like fire, like air, but there was one word that arced into her, a bolt of lightning, over and over, until it finally jolted her awake.

“ _SLAYER!_ ”

She sat up in a rush, pain stabbing through her head, and cast her eyes about wildly, finally finding the source of the voice, a roiling ball of fur and blood and black and white, but she couldn’t comprehend what it was, not through the pain and dizziness and disorientation, until the heaving mass shifted and she saw Spike’s face, eyes blazing.

“ _SLAYER!_ ” His voice was harsher this time, pleading, and there was something in his eyes that didn’t look right, because it was fear, and Spike wasn’t afraid, even when he was afraid, he always had swagger and bravado and why did he suddenly look terrified? Buffy couldn’t see, and she realized there was blood in her eyes, blood oh god her blood, and she shoved abruptly to her feet, swaying precariously, but there was fighting, there was fighting and she was The Slayer, she had to fight, and as her vision cleared, as she wiped the blood away and the sweat and the tears, she could see that Spike was wrestling with wolves, more than one – she couldn’t count, because they were moving and she was dizzy – and as she watched one of the wolf-heads in the throbbing mass of battle gaped wide and then crashed shut, and Spike’s throat was there _oh god_ Spike’s throat his _throat_ , and she fumbled in the pockets of the duster for her knives, and as the teeth ripped and savaged she hurtled forward and watched her hand as it rose and fell, stabbing and stabbing, until the clenched teeth sagged and released and fell away, and there was another face, slavering and growling, hair bristling on its neck, and “Traitor!” it muttered and “Vengeance” it snarled, and Buffy set her teeth and her shoulders and drove the knife between its eyes, and there was a third, but it quailed before her and she hesitated for a moment, but then she danced forward like a cat, slashing at its eyes and then at its throat, and it was dead before her, bleeding from a dozen wounds she didn’t remember but she didn’t care, she fell to her knees and crawled to Spike, and he was dead, he was dead, but he gurgled out words, almost words, and she sighed in relief because of course he was dead but he wasn’t dust, and she fell across his body in exhaustion.

His chest shifted weakly beneath her. “Did we win?” his voice rasped in her ear.

“Shut up,” Buffy sobbed, and pushed back onto her heels, gathering his mangled body up into her arms. He was covered in blood and strangely light, and she heaved to her feet, stumbling with dizziness, nearly tripping over the black-furred wolf corpse before her.

“Did I rescue you?” Spike insisted, eyes half-focused on her face.

“No, you moron,” Buffy snapped, pulling him closer. “I rescued you.”

Spike relaxed into her arms. “That’s all right then,” he sighed, and subsided into unconsciousness.

Buffy kicked open the door of the dam and kicked it shut behind her and rushed to the bedroom and laid Spike down on the rough straw mattress, falling to her knees.

“Don’t worry,” she crooned in a voice that didn’t sound like herself at all, it sounded thin and sad, and she set her chin and tucked him in and pressed her forehead to his chest, just for a moment, before she stood, legs still wobbly, and went in search of bandages.

She wasn’t going to let him dust. Not like this.


	6. In the Beaver's House

Spike’s nose tickled, but his arms felt heavy and sluggish; he somehow couldn’t muster the strength to scratch his nose, and so he stuck his lower lip out and tried to blow the itch away, but inhaling made his chest hurt, and so he stopped breathing altogether, and in the stillness realized that his chest wasn’t the only thing that hurt, in fact every part of him hurt to one degree or another, and that was unusual enough to make him crack his eyes open, but all he could see was a rough wood-and mud ceiling, which was less than informative.

Wolves. He remembered wolves, fur and fangs, and then he remembered the morning, leaving the dam  for his morning patrol, and just happening to look back in time to see the wolves leaping from their hiding place atop the dam, knocking Buffy into a tree, and then things were fuzzy again, or maybe they were clear but they just didn’t make sense, because he remembered rage and fear, the sight of Buffy unconscious beneath the paws of the wolves somehow _wrong_ , and running and leaping, tumbling on the ground, and, well, the fighting made sense, that was just his sort of fight, but not that red haze in his eyes, not the way that he didn’t even remember enjoying the fight, because he was too distracted worrying about…

“Buffy!”

His lips formed the word, he was sure of it, and he made some kind of a noise, but it didn’t sound right to his ears, and it _felt_ like his vocal cords had been replaced with jagged shards of glass, but he was already past caring about that, eyes darting from side to side trying to see where she was, and that was when he realized her head was pillowed on the mattress near his shoulder, her tousled hair wafting right under his nose – which explained the tickle.

She was fast asleep, sitting on a little three-legged stool by his bedside, one arm tucked under her cheek, the other draped awkwardly along the side of the bed, like she hadn’t quite known what to do with it. He couldn’t turn his head, not without pain, but he watched her out of the corner of his eye. He could just see the pulse beating in her throat.

God, he wanted it.

They hadn’t ever spelled out the terms of their truce, hastily-crafted as it was; there had just been an unspoken assumption that she wouldn’t stake him and he wouldn’t bite her, not while they were here in this dimension, but Spike had figured that at some point – either when they got home, or when he got too bored – he would find the opportunity to drain the slayer dry. The talking-animal blood he had been living off was vaguely nourishing, but didn’t quite satisfy, and he had spent many a morning imagining that the heat of the sun on his face was in fact the heat of the slayer’s blood running down his throat. (He had imagined all kinds of heat, if he were honest – the heat of her mouth and the heat of her body, and _god_ , everything about her would be hot, he would bloody _bathe_ in her heat, but he always reminded himself that the blood was the thing.) And now… he was starving, he could feel his body trying to heal, demanding he feed. He needed to feed.

Her pulse beat and beat.

It would hurt to roll over and bite her, it would hurt like bloody blazes, but it would be worth it. It would fill him, make him strong, heal him faster than any other blood. Her throat was right there, naked and exposed. She probably wouldn’t even wake up, not if he did it quick. He could drink her down, consume her, make her his. He wanted her. He _wanted_ her.

Her pulse kept beating, and he let his eyes drift shut.

Tomorrow.

He’d eat her tomorrow.

*

Buffy sucked at being a nurse.

Spike wasn’t complaining, but she could just tell she was not cut out for this whole comforting business. Sure, she wrapped a mean bandage, and she could pat him on the forehead and say nice things for a little while, but then she got… impatient. Her fingers started twitching and she started feeling all quivery in her stomach, and she caught herself fidgeting, tracing her fingers along his arms and chest, pacing up and down next to the bed… She didn’t know why she was so antsy, but after sitting and watching Spike sleep for a while, she just needed to _do_ something.

If she was lucky, some more vicious animals would attack, and she could beat up on them for a while and bring Spike back some dinner, but they were coming less frequently now, and there was something odd about the way they attacked. Like they were testing their defenses instead of truly trying for the kill. It was worrisome.

But in any case there wasn’t much to fight any more, and if there wasn’t anything to fight, Buffy found herself sitting next to the bed, her brain coming up with constantly weirder ideas to pass the time.

Today, she was counting freckles.

She had noticed when she was washing blood away, that very first day, that Spike had somehow acquired a dusting of pale gingery freckles across his cheekbones, and once she noticed that first bunch, she just kept finding more. On his shoulders, scattered like constellations across his chest. They were so faint they could barely be seen, and there was something compelling about them. Buffy had caught herself tapping her fingers on them, tracing patterns from one to another like connect-the-dots… They were fascinating. So when he fell asleep – he slept a lot, convalescing, especially after she fed him – she started to count.

She tried at first just looking at them and counting, but she kept getting lost, so she sighed and started to touch each one as she counted it, but she thought after a bit the poking might wake him, so by the time she had moved from his bicep to his smooth pale chest, she was trailing her fingers from one to the next, lightly so as not to wake him. His skin was strangely soft and cool, and as she passed a hundred she noticed that her hand was starting to tremble, and then she noticed that she was breathing hard, like she had been running, and she licked her lips and watched her fingers moving across his skin, freckle to freckle to freckle, and wondered what they would taste like, those little speckles, like cinnamon? if she were to just lean down and run her tongue along them and…

Oh. Oh _no_.

Buffy leapt to her feet, shaking her fingers out as if she’d just burned herself on the stove, except it was worse than burning herself on the stove, it was _so_ much worse, because she was having… she was having _thoughts_.

She was having lusty thoughts.

About Spike.

Oh _god_ , what was she thinking?

It had been a long time, she thought suddenly. A long time since she had been kissed, or touched, a long time since… Well. There had only been the once, and it had ended so badly that she couldn’t exactly look back at it with nostalgia, especially after Angel had come back from hell and spent months getting her all wound up before nobly taking himself off and leaving her and her hormones behind, but she had kind of been thinking maybe when the fall semester started she might, well, start looking again. Find someone.

Oh, why was she dancing around it? She had wanted to get _laid_. Some cute above-room-temperature college boy with a pulse.

Except there weren’t any college boys here. Just Spike. Spike and her, and more than a year of simmering hormones. It wasn’t her fault she was almost boiling over…

She took a deep breath, and another, sinking back to her stool. It was all right. She could handle this. She was a grown woman, and she could handle this.

She could handle Spike.

She was just counting. To pass the time.

Trembling, she laid her fingers on Spike’s flat stomach, the clean strip of skin between his bandaged chest and the sheet that covered him from the waist down. The sheet that was the only thing that covered him from the waist down, because she’d had to take off his torn jeans in order to treat some of the nastier bites, and while at the time she had been all matter-of-fact and just averted her eyes, now she was wishing there had been less averting and more noticing, because… oh, god, she was _curious_. Even now, her hand was tracing the edge of the sheet, dipping just a hair below it, the tiniest, most plausibly-deniable bit…

Counting. She was counting.

She started over at one.

 


	7. C.S. Lewis Rolls Over in his Grave

Spike was frustrated.

He was healing slowly, and every time he woke up and still couldn’t turn his head or move his arms without agony lancing through him, he cursed himself for not draining the slayer when he had the chance, so that he could be up and about and merrily killing things. (He was beginning to doubt that they would ever get home, but this dimension promised plenty of mayhem, so he supposed he could deal with that. Just as long as there was killing.) If he had only taken advantage of her misguided trust when he’d had the chance, he wouldn’t be a fucking invalid, bound to his bed – and not in the fun way, either.

He cursed even more each time the slayer fell asleep by his side, and he once again had to justify not biting her. She did it every bloody night, it seemed. Did she think he was impotent just because he could barely move?

He knew he wasn’t impotent, and he’d wager Buffy knew too, because the evidence was fairly obvious, seeing as his trousers had wandered off somewhere, and Buffy just kept… being. She just kept being Buffy. Perky tits and quirky smiles and weary eyes and teasing, soft touches, all parading around in front of him like a bleeding buffet, and when he was asleep she was doing the same thing in his dreams, except with less clothing.

He wanted her.

And the thin gingham sheet draped over his chronic cockstand was as good as a fucking advertisement in the bloody Times.

She had to have noticed, but she hadn’t acknowledged it one bit, which meant she was either horribly disgusted or horribly fascinated, and bugger it all, he was both avid and terrified to find out which. But she was… Well, she was his mortal enemy, is what. He couldn’t just smolder at her and ask her if she wanted to fuck – like that vamp not-friend of hers with the little-girl unicorn earrings and the pink leather bustier (which suddenly reminded Spike that he’d been fucking celibate since Dru had run off, and it was the slayer’s fault now, for interrupting them just as they were about to find an appropriate wall!) – no, the slayer was so bloody contrary that even if she _did_ want to fuck, she’d still stake him just on general principle.

And he was bloody pathetic anyhow. Bedridden and crippled, and it was ridiculous to dream about fucking the slayer when he wasn’t even brave enough to touch her, not when she was awake. Last night he had managed to bend his arm up to curl his fingers into her hair, and it had been… well, her hair wasn’t as shiny as it had been, no fancy shampoo here in Fun Homicidal Animal Land, but it had still felt… perfect. Sliding between his fingers like watered silk.

He wondered how it would feel on his lips.

He wondered how it would feel on his thighs.

Bloody buggering _fuck_ , how long was healing going to _take_?

*

Buffy was a terrible human being. She was terrible and awful, and she was _so_ going to hell, because she had done it.

She had _looked_.

Spike had been asleep, and she had been sitting there, bored, and, well… it had been _right there_. All perky and, well, _perky,_ and she had delicately lifted the edge of the tented sheet just enough to peek under, promising herself that this would be the end of it, that once her curiosity had been satisfied she would move on and never, ever again think a bad lusty thought about an evil vampire. And she had looked, and let the sheet fall again, and gotten back to the serious business of Watching Spike Heal, secure in her future virtuousness.

Except that her then-future, now-present virtuousness was, well, not precisely overflowing with virtue. As a point of fact, her thoughts were definitely tipping towards the _sinful_ side of the scales. Because he really had been… impressively perky. Even when he was fast asleep. How did that even work? It made her wonder, and once she was wondering about the anatomical logistics, that just opened the floodgates for her to wonder about other kinds of logistics. And about texture. And even about taste because, well, she had _heard_ things.

And she kept thinking about Vegas.

Las Vegas had that really catchy motto: _What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!_ And Buffy was starting to think maybe being stranded in this demon dimension was like going to Vegas. Maybe things that happened here didn’t really count. Like how she wasn’t staking him, and he wasn’t killing her, and they were kind of getting along, even though they both knew when they went back home they were going to go back to being enemies again.

What happened in… whatever this demon dimension was called… well, it was going to stay here.

And nobody would have to know.

Spike was telling her a story tonight – she had vetoed all the gross stuff, which cut out a lot of his repertoire, but he still had funny and interesting stories about things he’d seen in Europe and Asia and all the places he had traveled, which helped to fill the time in the evening when they were both sitting watching his wounds heal – while she was sitting on a stool beside the bed sharpening her knives, and the fire was the only light and it was kind of dreamy and dim and unreal, and for some reason while he was talking his fingers were absently stroking her elbow where it rested on the bed, and she wanted… she wanted…

She set her knives on the ground abruptly, the clang interrupting his story. “Did you know you have freckles?” she said into the sudden silence.

He looked at her like she had just turned blue. “No, I don’t.”

“You do,” she insisted. “Right here.” She leaned over him, brushing her thumb across his cheek to show him. Just to show him.

“Huh.” he said quietly, eyes warily fixed on hers.

“And here,” she whispered, stroking a finger down his nose.

His fingers on her elbow shifted, curling around to trace her side. “Anywhere else?” he murmured, eyelids drooping.

Trembling, she trailed a finger along his shoulder, one of the constellations. “Here.” She swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, and splayed her hand along his chest. “And here. They’re everywhere.”

“Everywhere?” he whispered, shifting restlessly beneath her hand, which was tracing patterns and designs that were sort of related to the freckles.

“Almost everywhere,” she said, biting her lower lip and thinking of places he probably didn’t have freckles – no, definitely didn’t. She knew because she had _looked_.

“Interesting,” he said silkily, and the curl of his mouth was so sinful, so sweet in the flickering firelight, that she had to lean over and kiss it, just the tiniest brush of her lips, and he inhaled at the contact, tilted his chin up into it, and somehow she was lying on the bed, her elbows on either side of his face, careful not to press on his tender wounds, sipping sweet kisses, and his arm had eased around her, wrapped gently around her waist, pressing the fabric of her shirt into the hollow of her spine, and then suddenly she was crying, sobbing into his shoulder, tears dripping down to splatter on his freckles.

“We’re never going to get home,” she sobbed fiercely into his skin.

“Hush, love,” Spike whispered into her hair.

“I hate you,” she said softly, counting his freckles again with her lips. They tasted salty, not like cinnamon at all.

“Do you?” Spike asked lightly, a hint of laughter in his voice.

“Well, maybe,” Buffy grumbled. “Maybe I do.” She was kissing the freckles on his chest now, because once she started counting she had to keep going. She slid a hand down to his stomach, her thumb dipping into his belly button.

Spike’s arm curled up to tangle in her hair as her lips traveled along the edge of his bandages. “Look at you, Slayer,” he murmured fondly. “Taking advantage of a man when he can hardly move.”

“Am I?” Buffy sat up abruptly, staring at him. “Oh god, I’m sorry, I’ll stop,” she babbled, cheeks hot. She hadn’t thought, but it wasn’t fair, of course it wasn’t, he was completely in her power…

“Don’t stop,” Spike said harshly, hand tightening on the nape of her neck. “Take more. Take… take everything.”

Buffy looked at him for a long moment, barely breathing. “Everything?” she finally said, eyes locked on his, and reached down to stroke his hard length through the sheet. “This, too?”

His eyes slammed shut and he muttered a harsh curse, and tugged her down to his lips, and his mouth was urgent on hers, desperate, and she sank into it because oh _god_ it was good to be kissed, he tasted like cool moonlight and clear water, and his lips trembled against hers with fragments of words, mingled with _yes_ and _more_ and _god_ , and she wanted to hear it, she wanted to savor her descent into plausibly-deniable staying-in-this-dimension sin, so she eased down so she was lying beside him, curled into his side, her hand still stroking him through the sheet while she watched his face.

When she pushed away the sheet, though, she had to look, watch her fingers curl around him, slide up and down his length; she curved in to lay her head on his chest, and his lips were in her hair and on her forehead, and it was somehow sweet and pure, no sounds but the crackling of the fire and his voice and the faint friction of skin on skin, and she watched in fascination as he quivered and jolted and came, swearing into her brow, and then he was kissing her and kissing her, and she suddenly felt shy and buried her face in his shoulder.

His hands were on her then, both hands, caressing, but they were shaking, and she sat up and took his hands in hers, tenderly kissing his knuckles. “No,” she said, feeling unaccountably serene, even though desire was still pooling in her belly. “Rest.”

He glared at her then. “Had enough bloody _rest_ ,” he bit out, struggling to sit up, then sinking back with a wince. “ _Fuck_.”

Buffy kissed his forehead and pressed him back into the bed. “Rest,” she repeated, and suddenly she felt like the best nurse ever, because he lay back and allowed her to clean him and tuck him in, watching her with narrow, intense eyes, and then she eased down onto the bed beside him, finding the least-wounded bits of him to snuggle up to, and at last he sighed and relaxed against her.

“Tomorrow,” he said suddenly, voice hoarse.

She nodded against him. “Tomorrow.”

 

And in a distant valley, a deep, rich voice resonated like a bell.

“Tomorrow,” it intoned. “We march tomorrow.”


	8. Smuttery and Sudden Vengeance

Spike woke abruptly in the dawn, confused, because he had a warm snuggly body curled up by his side, and at first he thought the body should be cool, because he had only ever slept alongside Drusilla, but then he remembered Drusilla was long gone, the faithless bitch, and then he realized he could move, that his arms were wrapped around Buffy with hardly any pain at all, and he concluded with a rising sense of panic that he must have drained her in his sleep, because how else would he be feeling so much better? But if he had drained the Slayer, shouldn’t her body be cool by now, instead of warm and soft? And shouldn’t he have the taste of her rich blood on his tongue? And then he went right back to cursing himself, because even in his sleep he couldn’t do her in, and what the fuck was up with the _panic_ anyhow? Bugger that.

But he did feel better, the pain less sharp and his muscles slightly stronger, and it was mystifying, until he realized his ever-present erection was far less painful than it had been – it was of course still there, because he had a warm slayer pressed up against his side, and his cock had certainly taken notice, but it was a pleasant want-to-fuck-erection, not a no-relief-in-sight-blue-balls-special – and he began to suspect that the blood his body needed to heal had been otherwise occupied keeping him rock-hard. Now that he’d had a bit of relief – and hadn’t that been a glorious surprise? He still felt a bit dizzy, remembering Buffy’s warm hand, the shy passion on her face – his bloody blood was finally content to do its fucking job. Fucking illogical vamp circulation. Beating hearts were so much simpler.

Lying in the dimness, Spike also remembered that bloody “guru” he’d met in the sixties – not that he had been a real wise man, just an ex-beatnik with more beard than sense – and his tantric theories. Unfulfilled lust, the weedy twat had claimed, was responsible for all the ills of the human condition; the road to perfect health and vigor was indulging one’s normal, healthy sexual desires as often as possible. Of course, he had then finagled this promising theory into the conclusion that all the nubile hippie girls in his little cult should logically fuck him, the guru, to ensure his long life, which was a diabolical plan that Spike had rather admired before he snapped the bastard’s neck, but perhaps instead of just being a devious sexual predator, he’d actually been on to something. Maybe coming in the slayer’s hot little hand had infused Spike with healing tantric energies – and if so, maybe they should do it again. And more. Find out just which sexual acts were the most healing, as a matter of scientific inquiry.

Spike was willing to do his part for science.

He was pleasantly drifting on a sea of hypotheses and planned experiments when Buffy stirred next to him, eyelids fluttering, and Spike was instantly alert, because he suspected she was the type for morning-after regrets and recriminations, and there was rather a lot of sharp wood lying about, this being a beaver’s dam.

He closed his eyes and tried to exude… innocence? Wounded-ness? Something-ness that might lead to not-staked-ness.

There was a sigh against his neck – delicious and terrifying – and an absent stroke along his chest, and then the bed jolted harshly as Buffy’s warmth heaved away from his side, her heartrate and breath fast and rough.

“No,” she moaned faintly. “This is… oh, no. No no no.”

Despite her words, though, Spike was cautiously optimistic, because, one, she hadn’t leapt from the bed to get any of the ubiquitous sharp wood; two, she also hadn’t punched him in the nose; and three, her warm hand was still on his chest.

And her fingers were starting to trace freckles again.

What he wanted to do was drag her down for a solid snog, get her hands in more interesting places, but he could tell she was… skittish. A flight risk. So instead he stretched, like he was still asleep, arching his back and his stomach just enough that – ah, yes. There was a rush of cool air as the sheet slipped just low enough to slide right off his cock.

Buffy’s muttered litany of denial stopped abruptly.

Spike growled sleepily in his throat, casually running a hand down his body to scratch at his hip, then curve in to subtly cup his cock, just in case she hadn’t noticed it yet.

Well, no, actually not subtly at all. Subtlety was not Spike’s strong point, especially when he was randy and quivering with fear and excitement. Subtlety could go bugger itself. He gave himself a nice long stroke.

“Are you awake, Spike?” Buffy said softly, and he wondered for a moment whether she wanted him to be asleep so she could secretly molest him, or if she wanted him to be awake so she could openly caress him, but in the end he just needed to look at her, because this keeping-his-eyes-shut was bloody ridiculous, and the sun was probably in her hair. He gave another good stretch and growl, and let his eyes open halfway.

Oh god, the morning sun _was_ in her hair. She looked like a goddess, even with her face all apprehensive and conflicted. “Morning,” he said, voice rough with lust. She just kept staring at him with troubled eyes, and so he put his hands to his bandaged chest, making a show of hissing in pain.

Instantly Buffy’s face shifted to concern. “Oh god, does it hurt worse?” Her mouth crumpled into sadness. “Was it… was it something I did?”

Oh bugger, not _guilt_. Spike rose up on his elbows, grinning. “If it was, you can bloody well do it again.” _God, please please please do it again!_ He slid one hand onto her thigh; it was steady and confident, and her face lit up.

“You’re feeling better,” she breathed.

Spike shrugged, curving his hand a little higher; she was sitting cross-legged, and from his angle the seams of her jeans were all pointing to what he suspected was the hottest, wettest, most delicious quim of all time. “Much improved,” he purred.

He was surprised when she fell forward and hugged him. “You’re getting better,” she repeated, and somehow the thought of fucking her went all the way to the back of his mind, replaced by something warm and soft and tender.

“Suppose I am,” he said huskily, and then she was kissing him, lips sweet and urgent, and _god_ if it wasn’t the best kiss ever, and now the soft tenderness was joining forces with his desire, washing over him in waves, and he cupped the sweet nape of her neck in his free hand while the one on her thigh traced her inseam up and up until he found her center, tucking his fingers down until he had her cradled in the palm of his hand.

She jerked back then, looking him in the eye, and he thought he should be saying something sexy, something evil, something confident and manly and arrogant, but instead he just licked his dry lips, and whispered, “Please,” and stroked the denim, carefully pressing the seam into her. “Please,” he begged again, and her eyelids fluttered almost all the way closed, and she relaxed against him.

“Yes,” she said, and her voice was like the breaking dawn, a queen voice, a goddess voice, and then she hissed against his lips as he stroked her firmly. The jeans were rough under his fingertips, the seam hard and stiff, and he put the roughness and the hardness to use, rubbing them against her until she was gasping into his throat, but he had to know how soft she was, _god_ , she must feel like heaven, and he thumbed open the button on her jeans and tugged impatiently at the zipper, and she was helping him now, wriggling her hips as he yanked the denim down just enough to make room for his hand, stroking her over her panties, once, twice, and then ducking under the edge of the elastic, tracing _her_ sweet seam down and down, and _god oh god_ she was so hot, so wet, so perfect, and his fingers were shaking now but not from pain as he explored her, ah, yes, _there_ , and she cried out sharply, digging her fingers into his shoulders.

“Gonna make you come,” Spike crooned into her ear, and Buffy nodded against his shoulder, shifting to face him, and he hooked his thumb under her knee, cocking her leg up so she was wide open to him, shoving the jeans further down over her perfect ass, the hand in her hair tugging until she lifted her head for another kiss and he stroked her hard, nibbling on her lips, inhaling her gasps, and… yes, that was it, he could feel her starting to tremble against him, her thighs quivering like butterfly wings, and _oh god_ , she came under his fingers like fucking magic, wet and glorious, and he stroked her wetness into her and kissed her forehead, so softly, letting her ease down, but then she tilted her hips to his fingers again, hungrily, and he laughed into her hair and gave her more, stroking and flicking and she was building again, so fast, so incredibly hot, and he couldn’t get enough, oh god, the sun in her hair and the way she shook and her breathy gasps, and when she came again with a squeak, he buried his forehead against the column of her throat and shifted his wet fingers to himself, thrusting his cock into his deliciously slick palm until he was coming too, they were both wet and spent and somehow laughing, because this was madness, it was wrong, they couldn’t do this, Spike knew it, but god god _god_ he was never going to give this up. Never.

Buffy was unusually silent, pressing soft little kisses against his forehead, and he wrapped his arms around her, squeezing tight as she nuzzled into him, and then suddenly she pushed away, leaning over him, eyes somehow wild, tangled hair glowing in the sun. “Was I… Did I do it right?” Her eyes were vulnerable and apprehensive, and Spike suddenly remembered Angel, gloating. _To kill this girl… you have to love her_. And he knew in that moment that this, this was her weak point, this sweetness, this desire to give. This was the way to kill her. Angel had been right after all.

Except Angel wasn’t here. It was Spike and Buffy, and sun and flowing water, blood and battle and sex, and he looked up at her and stroked her hair back from her forehead and smiled, feeling like the sun was beaming out from him. “Yeah,” he admitted. “You did it bloody perfect.”

She smiled the sun right back at him.

*

The great lion stalked back and forth before its gathered army of beasts, tail lashing with rage.

The lion was huge, shaggy, and bright, his velvet paws huge and terrible, his eyes overwhelming; the beasts that surrounded him in a semicircle – leopards and centaurs, bears and foxes and eagles, mice and badgers and horses and even a unicorn – all trembled in the face of his outrage and fury.

“It is intolerable,” the great cat snarled. “These brazen intruders, challenging my rule of this green land.”

“Actually,” one of the centaurs pointed out nervously, “They’ve been kind of… keeping to themselves. Just, you know. Hanging out. In the beaver’s dam. Doing, um, things.” A few of the younger centaurs elbowed each other, sniggering at the tales that the tree-spirits had sent across the forests.

“They slew the beavers. And my loyal faun.” The lion’s whiskers were rigid with anger.

The gathered animals glanced uncomfortably at each other. “That is true,” said a cautious bobcat. “But, well. You know that faun had, um, boundary issues.”

“Mr. Beaver owed me twenty gold pieces!” the badger interjected.

“It is of no matter,” the lion growled. “They have come, and they must be vanquished.”

The army of animals shifted nervously. “Yeah, about the vanquishing,” a nervous-looking bear ventured. “They are, well, pretty strong.”

“They killed the White Witch and her dwarves!” a voice from the back of the crowd chimed in.

“Not to mention everyone else we’ve sent against them,” another voice grumbled.

“Even the wolves,” muttered a third.

The lion swept his multitude with a scorching glare. “Enough!” he roared. “We march for Beaversdam this day. Many – nay, all of you may die, but that is a small price to pay to take our country back from these vile usurpers!” He turned and stalked into the woods, his golden mane like the sun.

The unenthusiastic army sighed, following their god-king to certain doom.

*

“You know I have to stake you.”

Buffy was proud of herself for managing to get that sentence out. For one thing, she really was starting to think she didn’t want to stake Spike at all, and was trying to think of loopholes in which letting him live didn’t make her a disgrace to her calling. For another thing, she was having trouble thinking at all, given what Spike was doing with his tongue.

Despite the vast improvement in Spike’s health, he was still weak and in pain, which they had discovered when he had rolled Buffy over onto her back, growling that he’d show her how bloody perfect she was – he had lost consciousness for a moment, collapsing onto her stomach, and had stayed unconscious while Buffy tucked him back into the middle of the bed. When he came to, he was surly and pouty, grumbling about the unfairness of a world in which he couldn’t shag. But Buffy had been firm, back in Nurse Buffy Mode, insisting that he stay lying down for at least another day.

He had pointed out that he was just bursting with energy, and if Buffy wanted him to stay still, she would have the most success if she weighed him down with something. Like, for example, her own body.

She had rolled her eyes, but had crawled onto the bed with him, making a show of reluctance.

Then he had pointed out that it was traditional when huddling together for warmth for the huddling parties to be naked.

“We’re not huddling together for warmth,” Buffy had replied. “It’s spring.”

He had cast her a sinful glance through his eyelashes. “But I’m _cold_.”

“You’re room temperature,” Buffy had sniffed. “You don’t feel the cold.” But even as she spoke she stood up, popping the button on the jeans she had hastily yanked back up while getting Spike settled. They needed to be washed anyways, she had reasoned, trying not to feel… well, _naked_ as she shimmied out of the jeans and her still-damp panties. She hadn’t been naked with a guy since… and that had been different, dim lighting and blankets and not a great deal of thought. This, stripping deliberately under Spike’s hot gaze in the slanting rays of morning sun, was terrifying and exhilarating and embarrassing all at once, but still felt somehow _right_.

Spike had simply watched her with lazy eyes as she pulled her shirt off over her head and settled back onto the mattress, his eyes nearly crossing as she crawled back over him.

“Better?” she had whispered with smug bravado.

“Much,” he replied, pulling her in for a kiss.

“You have to rest,” Buffy regretfully insisted a short while later, when his hands got a little extra handsy.

“I find this very restful,” he said, squeezing her bare breast.

“I’m serious. Lie still. I put a lot of work into making you well.” She thumped his shoulder warningly.

His eyes flared. “I’ll lie still,” he’d agreed.

“Good.”

Spike grinned wickedly. “Just means you’ll have to do all the moving, pet.”

Which was how she found herself, just a few minutes later, on her knees gripping the rustic wooden headboard, undulating over Spike’s face as he licked and sucked and nibbled and did god-knew-what-but- _god_ -it-felt-good to her throbbing nether regions. True to his word, he was lying still; his head was flat on the pillow, and he was letting her control everything, his hands clutching her thighs for purchase, and while she had been kind of dubious at first, the first few strokes of his tongue had convinced her that this was a good idea, and a bit after that she revised upwards because this was the _best_ idea, and now she was just lost in sensation, except for that niggling feeling that she really was a terrible person and she had to remember her duty.

Spike didn’t seem especially worried about his imminent dust-hood. “Yeah, baby,” he growled into her, sending vibrations along every one of her nerves. “Stake me _hard_.”

“I mean it!” Buffy insisted, tilting her hips to urge his tongue just _there_. “When we go home, I have to kill you.”

He gave her a good long lick, pushing her hips back just far enough that he could meet her eyes. “You have to _try_ ,” he said harshly. “I’m not going to go down without a fight.” The look in his eyes, bloodlust and wicked mirth and something else, something pure and soft and incomprehensible, sent a shiver right down into the pit of her stomach; Buffy groaned and pressed down desperately and he laughed and said, “You should’ve realized that by now,” and nipped her somewhere sensitive, light enough to feel oh so good but hard enough to emphasize the double entendre, before setting his lips to her, and another sharp orgasm took her by surprise. Spike laughed again and nipped at her inner thigh with his blunt teeth. “Like that thought, do you?” he purred, and she could feel her face turning red, which was silly, being embarrassed at this point, but wouldn’t most people think it was weird? Good girls didn’t get sent over the edge by the thought of violence.

Oh god, she wasn’t a good girl. She was a bad girl, a bad, bad girl who was letting a bad, bad vampire lick her in bad, bad places, and she didn’t even really feel all that bad about it.

It was a good thing she was already in a hell dimension. Saved the cost of a handbasket.

Spike looked up at her again, eyes unreadable, and he grinned against her. “Don’t want you to hold back,” he said conversationally. “When it comes time for killing, make it a good one.” He tilted his head up and pressed a single chaste kiss right at her center.

Buffy looked down at him, gulping. “I have to,” she repeated.

“Yeah, you do,” Spike agreed, shrugging, then dug his fingers into her flesh, regarding her exposed crotch with a heavy-lidded focus that made her shake. “But not right now. Right now…” He looked back up at her, eyes intense. “Don’t look away. I want to see your eyes when you come.”

She didn’t look away, kept her eyes locked on his over her heaving breasts as his tongue played over her knowingly, and _god_ she was almost there already, just watching his face, and when it hit her, she cried out, low and guttural, and his face was full of wonder and awe, and she reached down to brush his cheek with the backs of her fingers.

“I’m going to kill you,” she said softly.

“Not if I kill you first,” Spike replied, eyes wide and naked.

She smiled down tenderly. “Okay then.”

They looked at each other for a long time along the length of her quivering body, then Spike’s eyes narrowed and he turned his head to the side, sweetly kissing the inside of her thigh. “I could kill you right now,” he growled, gently setting his blunt teeth to her femoral artery.

 “You could,” Buffy agreed breathlessly, closing her eyes and arching back, quivering with anticipation.

“Bloody _hell_ , woman,” he swore under his breath and then his mouth and tongue were on her again and she bore down against him, demanding more more more, and he gave her more, gave her just what she needed, hard and tender and rough and sweet, and she came against his wicked lips with a scream and then she was sliding down his body, his hands urging her down until they were face to face, belly to belly, his cock hard against her and she still wanted more.

For a moment she was terrified, remembering, girlish hopes and misty fantasies and one rainy night, betrayal and grief and rejection – but Spike was real and there, trembling beneath her, his eyes seeing only her, and she was aching and vibrating with want, and god, his _eyes_ , and she didn’t think, just reached between them and fumbled and shifted, awkward, and then his hand was there to help, and then oh then oh _god_ he felt good, his rough voice in her ears and his hands on her hips, and she sat back to take him in all the way, opening to him, splaying her fingers out on his bandaged chest, closing her eyes to feel him, deeper and deeper, and it wasn’t what she remembered at all, clandestine and shy and submissive – no, she was incandescent and open, carnal and carnivorous, and Spike was right there with her, his face raw with desire, his hips starting to thrust up into her, little jolts of pleasure, but he was supposed to be _resting_ , she thought suddenly, and she took his hands in hers, entangling his fingers and pressing them back into the mattress beside his head.

“Lie still,” she said in a voice like steel.

Spike glared up at her, lips sulky. “Make me.”

Buffy gave her hips a little swirl and smiled. “Lie still,” she said again, velvet and cream. “Let me take care of you.”

His fingers twitched against hers. “You’re a cruel woman, Slayer.” He was grinning again, sharp and bright.

“Am I?” Buffy sat up again, pulsing against him. “And here I thought I was the best nurse ever.” She gave her hips another swirl, harder this time; Spike inhaled sharply, eyes closing, head sinking back into the pillow. “Say it,” she murmured silkily.

“ _Bloody hell_. You’re the best bloody nurse ever. I’ll lie still. _Please_.” His hands twisted into the sheets, the muscles of his arms taut.

Buffy didn’t answer, just started to move.

Spike didn’t technically lie still, she supposed; it didn’t take long before his hands were on her hips, helping her find just the right angle, because she was a little awkward at first, and once she got her rhythm going he was matching it thrust for thrust, and then once she _really_ got her rhythm going he turned his attention to her breasts, rubbing and caressing, and she let all of that slide, but she absolutely drew the line at letting him sit up to suck on her nipples.

“Tomorrow,” she said sweetly when he growled at being pushed back down, and when he looked like he wanted to protest, she curled down and sucked on one of _his_ nipples, which made him swear and tangle his hands in her hair.

“Fine,” he muttered, voice somewhere between blissed-out and pissed-off. “Bloody tomorrow.”

When Buffy sat up, he glared at her with furious eyes, slid his thumbs right to where their bodies were joined, and pressed down just as he thrust up into her, which sent her right over the edge again, except now, with him filling her, it was shattering, the orgasm ripping through her like she was tissue paper, and she fell forward for a moment, dizzy.

When she could see again, Spike was smirking vengefully. “Had enough, Slayer?”

“Like hell,” Buffy bit out, clenching around him as she reared back up, but she was laughing and so was he, as she rose and fell and he urged her on, and when he convulsed with a muttered curse and came, she rocked against him, watching his face as he peaked and came down, and then crawled up the bed to kiss him, forehead and cheek and wicked lips. He tasted like sin, and laughter, and sex, and her.

He nuzzled into her forehead, curling an arm up to stroke her hair, soothing. “Thought you weren’t going to kill me until we got home,” he said, laughing faintly.

Buffy shrugged nonchalantly, snuggling closer. “Plans change.” She traced the edges of his bandage. “Now rest.”

He did.

 


	9. The Lion Marches Tonight

Spike was in awe.

Even though he was fairly certain she’d not had much experience beyond the Brooding Snore, the slayer had taken to sex like a fledgling bird pushed from the nest, flying higher and higher, and he was starting to wonder if he would ever be able to keep up, even when he was back to his full strength.

That first day – not their first day in the bloody demon dimension, of course, but the day Buffy had proven the firelight handjob wasn’t just a fluke, the day they had made love, which Spike considered momentous enough to be the beginning of a new era, Day One of Year One, _Anno Buffy_ – Buffy had cleaned him and herself and tucked him in and they had lain in the morning sun until it was the afternoon sun, talking about mundanities and trivia, fighting techniques and poetry, until after a brief nap in the afternoon he’d declared himself strong enough to try walking. Buffy had helped him to the rocking chair – which seemed much further than he remembered – and set her stool beside him, sitting naked to sharpen her knives. It had been heart-stoppingly domestic, and he had tried to curl his lip at it, because of course he was _bad_ , but he had secretly felt… comfortable. Like he belonged. And then, when he was starting to feel restless, Buffy curled up in the chair with him and kissed him silly before sinking to her knees to take his cock in her mouth, which eventually led to her riding him on the fur rug in front of the fireplace for… well, there were no clocks to measure time, but it was long enough that he got to watch the light of sunset play over her naked, sweaty breasts from beginning to end, and even a bit of moonlight after, and it was so glorious he forgot to be pissed off that he couldn’t flip her over and fuck her the dozen other ways he wanted to.

The day after, he had felt well enough to accompany Buffy out to the riverbank, where he kept watch from a shaded blanket while she scrubbed out their tattered clothes and bathed. From the shy, wicked looks she kept casting him through her eyelashes, he could tell she felt naughty flaunting her nakedness, and he encouraged that, murmuring suggestions until she had stroked herself to panting, quivering completion, knee-deep in water. While their clothes were drying, she had cuddled up for more kisses, which led to more caresses, which led eventually to her gloriously sucking and licking his cock while he drowned in her delicious pink quim, spread wide over his eager face; she sucked harder when she came, hard enough to make his eyes roll back in his head, and it had been a bloody good thing nothing did actually come to attack them, because Spike’s every nerve ending was focused on her.

Day three… ah, day three he felt well enough to be on top, if not too energetically, and it was tame and sweet and perfect, and after, she had looked up at him with sad, resolved eyes and reminded him that she was going to kill him, and he had vowed yet again to kill her first, and it made him want to weep. Or kill something (not her). Or both.

Killing something was starting to get urgent by day four, though; the animals had stopped attacking entirely of late, which was a fine thing as far as fucking and recovering was concerned, left their schedule wide open, but had the unfortunate side effect of leaving Spike without a source of blood. He was almost completely healed now, which was brilliant, but he was starting to feel the effects of hunger, which was significantly less brilliant, and there was just no getting around it; they had to find him some food. So they set off upriver, hunting.

They started their hunt in the woods, but as it turned out the underbrush concealed a surprising number of tangled roots that seemed almost to rise up to trip them as they walked, and the wind kept lashing branches into their faces, so they soon decided to head out to the rolling green meadows instead, walking companionably side by side.

Spike preferred the meadow in any case; he had spent more than a week cooped up in the little dam house, and while there were windows letting in the sun, it wasn’t the same as being out in it, feeling it full on his face. He had closed his eyes to soak in the rays when Buffy’s voice startled him.

“You like the sun.”

He shrugged, a bit sheepishly. “Well, yeah. Best bloody thing about being stranded in this bloody hellhole.” He glanced at her sidelong. _Well, second best._

“Do you…” She looked thoughtful. “Do you miss it? Not here, but… at home.”

“It’s a bit different when it’s trying to kill you, love,” he grinned, then shaded his eyes to scan the distance. “But yeah. Being human, you get to have everything. Light and dark, night and day. You have it all but you don’t appreciate it.” He shrugged again, hunkering down to sit in the grass, his coat spread around him. “Never wanted to feel the sun on my face so much as when I couldn’t anymore.” He looked at his hand, paler than pale in the sunlight, lightly freckled now, remembering Angelus, their hands smoking in a beam of sunlight as they played an asinine version of chicken. “You hate it, but at the same time you crave it. You fear it, but you love it.”

Buffy settled across from him, cross-legged. “Why?”

“Dunno,” Spike laughed. “But way I hear it, sunlight’s where all life comes from, isn’t it?” He beheaded a dandelion. “Bloody plants, soak it up and turn it to food, animals eat the plants, bigger animals eat the smaller animals, bloody circle of life going round and round. With humans at the top of the bloody food chain.”

“And vampires,” Buffy noted. “You prey on humans.”

Spike sighed. “Yeah, but we’re not part of it. We feed off it, steal from it, but then when we die, we’re just dust. We don’t give anything back.” He watched her narrowly, the light in her hair and her face screwed up with thought. “We just take.”

Buffy frowned and opened her mouth, probably to argue, the daft bint, when her face suddenly grew watchful, then cunning, and then she leapt to her feet, dashing to the edge of the woods. Spike rolled up to follow her – still moving a little slow, bugger it – and when he caught up, she had a huge badger pinned up against a tree. It was snarling and slavering, muttering imprecations under its breath, and something about gold? Whatever, it was pissed off, and violent, and, well, maybe not delicious, but Spike’d wager its blood would do him plenty of good, being better than no blood at all.

“Looky, looky,” he drawled, cracking his knuckles. “Suppertime.”

Spike felt faint, already imagining the scent of fresh blood, and initially he thought it was because he was just anticipating his first real meal in forever – while recuperating, he’d had to feed from the dead animals Buffy brought him, which was far less fun than fresh from the tap – but then he realized he wasn’t imagining things, he was really smelling blood, because the bloody beast had marked Buffy – a row of slashes on her arm were seeping blood, and his hunger was suddenly buried beneath rage, because fucking _nobody_ got to draw her blood but _him_.

She was unconcerned by the wound, having captured the beast’s flailing claws, and was staring it down. “Why are you spying on us?” she snapped. “Why do you keep trying to kill us?”

The badger glared at her malevolently. “The Great Lion demands it,” it hissed with a malicious grin. “And tomorrow He shall come with His army, and you shall meet your doom!” It struggled against her restraining hands.

“The Great Lion?” Buffy asked, eyes narrow. “An _army_?”

It laughed cruelly. “Our God-King demands blood.” It stilled suddenly, beady eyes fixed on Buffy’s with a mad fervor. “He shall come, bringing Deep Magic, from the Dawn of Time, and He shall feast upon your entrails while you yet live.” The creature suddenly roared and broke free of Buffy’s grasp with a burst of energy; she fell back, rolling up into a ready crouch, but the badger had already gone for Spike, and after being cooped up for bloody-well- _ever_ , he’d be damned if he was going to let her have all the fun.

The badger had sharp claws but very little reach, and was reckless with rage besides; after dodging a few slashing blows, Spike took the tail of his duster and whipped it around the beast’s head, disorienting it enough to take its back and catch it up in a half-Nelson, sinking his fangs past matted fur into flesh, and it tasted nasty but it was _blood_ , and as the badger weakened and finally stilled, Spike realized Buffy was watching him, eyes unreadable.

He dropped the cooling corpse. “Sorry.”

“For what? I thought getting you food was the whole point.” Buffy turned to look off into the distance. “Did you hear what he said?”

“Something about an army,” Spike replied, wiping his mouth self-consciously, though he guessed since Buffy had been bringing him food while he was laid up, she must have lost some of her squeamishness.

“An army,” Buffy repeated with a frown. “Can we defeat an army?”

“ _You_ can, love,” Spike said, grinning, and she grinned back for a moment, then suddenly let loose with a punch that he barely managed to dodge. “Bloody hell,” he sputtered, falling back as she kicked at his head.

She was still grinning though. “Just checking to see how the healing’s coming along,” she laughed, and Spike glared at her and let loose a backhand of his own that connected, though she managed to deflect most of the force. They started to circle each other in the waving grass.

“It’s coming,” Spike shrugged, feigning a lack of concern as he watched her for an opening. God, he was hard already, the smell of her blood going straight to his cock, and he’d wager she was already wet, she had that look in her eyes, but _god_ he needed to fight. “Tomorrow,” he purred, stalking her.

She looked perplexed for a moment. “You want to wait until tomorrow?”

“No,” he smiled back. “That’s what the furry git said. The army’s coming tomorrow.”

Buffy feinted suddenly, a right hook melting into a roundhouse kick. “Yep, that’s what it said.” She fell abruptly into a leg sweep; he managed to jump over it, and she spun up to face him, breathing hard. “Why is that such a big deal?”

“Because,” Spike said, falling back for a moment and hooking his thumbs in his belt, regarding her. “That gives us all of today.” He dove in with a flurry of punches, driving her back, and _god_ it felt good to move, bloody fantastic. “Army’s coming tomorrow,” he murmured with velvety promise, stalking her. “You’re going to come today.”

Buffy’s breath caught; she dodged away. “Am I?”

“Oh yeah,” Spike promised, watching her hair whip around her in the sun. “It’s tradition, isn’t it? A good hard fuck before going off to war.”

Buffy’s eyes gleamed and she bit her lip. “Hard?” she whispered.

Oh, that had her; she was already starting to quiver. “I’m all better now, love,” he purred, feeling the badger’s blood doing its work. “Can fuck you any way you want. Been thinking about how you’d like it best.” He feinted again, turning his blow into a quick stroke of her cheek. “Ever been fucked from behind, love?”

Buffy didn’t answer immediately, aiming a flashy spin kick at his head, but _ah_ , that look in her eyes! “No,” she finally said in a low, trembling voice. “I haven’t been… from behind.” Oh god, she was adorable, blushing like she hadn’t spent the past week cavorting naked with him. She let loose another punch.

“Gonna make sure you’re good and wet first,” Spike said thoughtfully, dodging. “So wet you’re begging for more. Maybe lay you down here in the grass.” Spike kicked at a puffy dandelion, sending seeds scattering on the breeze. “Then turn you over, get you on your knees.” Buffy was circling him slowly, watchful, eyes avid. “The thing about fucking you from behind,” he continued, keeping his tone measured, “is how deep I can get inside you. You like it deep, as I recall.”

Buffy nodded, quivering.

Spike went on, eyes locked on hers. “And now that I’m healed, I can use the extra leverage to go hard. Can just… _drive_ into you.” He licked his lips. “Been thinking you’d like that.”

Buffy shrugged with patently-false nonchalance. “Maybe.”

“Oh, you’ll like it,” Spike promised.

Buffy grinned then, playfully. “Are you sure you’re up to it, Spikey?” she taunted. “Takes a lot to satisfy me.” And she kicked him, hard in the stomach, sending him reeling back.

“Oh, I am very definitely _up_ to it,” he grinned back, and the battle was on.

They danced across the meadow, whirling and striking in the sunlight, and somewhere along the line they added kissing and touching, until they were rolling on the grass, hands frantically tearing at clothing. Spike shrugged out of his duster awkwardly, spreading it out on the grass, and Buffy lay in the very middle, gazing up at him with hungry eyes as he skinned out of his tattered shirt, and her hands were on his belt buckle while he was yanking her jeans down and pulling off her boots, because he wanted her naked, all naked in the sunlight, not a stitch on her or him, like bloody Adam and Eve, and when they were both finally bare she held her arms out to him and he fell upon her, filling his hands with her sweet breasts and kissing a trail down her sternum. He knelt above her and worshipped each hand, running his tongue over the calluses from knife and crossbow and stake, running his teeth along her wrists, her life pumping urgently right at the surface, and _oh god_ her life dripping down her arm, he could smell it and he was going to resist but she offered it up, watching gravely as he licked away the trails of blood before tearing himself away from the already-healing gashes to suck on her earlobes and her throat and each hard pink nipple, and then all the way down her legs to her perfect toes, nail polish long since worn away. He bit gently at her arches, nuzzled her ankles, ran his tongue in a long stripe all the way up the inside of her leg until he reached her fragrant quim, and he didn’t tease her, just kept his tongue going right onto her, and she was already dripping and swollen, ready for him, but he didn’t want just _ready_ he wanted _begging_ and so he lingered, making himself as comfortable as he could be with his impatient cock throbbing against her leg, savoring each whimper and cry, feeling her shatter like glass under his tongue again and again.

“Please,” she finally sobbed, voice deep and rich with passion. “God, _please_!”

And he sat back onto his heels and she looked at him with eyes like fire, and smiled, and wriggled around until her back was exposed to him, her delectable rear tilted up to him, her eyes laughing over her shoulder through her tangled hair, and he ran his hand from the nape of her neck along the bumps of her spine, right down to her ass, and then stroked his whole hand through her wetness, once, twice, feeling her tremble.

“ _Now_ , Spike,” Buffy demanded, and he took hold of her hips and drove his cock home.

She cried out, low and harsh, and he slid one hand around and pressed down on her clit as he withdrew and drove in again, and she clenched around him, right on the edge, and it only took a few strokes before she came, and he raised his face to the sun and closed his eyes and stilled, buried inside her as she convulsed around him, and it was everything, everything, and then his eyes popped open and he was terrified because oh god he _loved_ this woman, his slayer, his doom, and for a moment he didn’t know what to do.

But Buffy tilted her hips to him and _more_ she demanded, and he could do that, he could give her more, he would give it all to her, and so he slid his knees between hers, spreading her wider, and caught her dangling breasts in his hands and fucked her and fucked her, tenderly and hard and slowly and faster, and he was swearing now, because he was bloody well buggered but _god_ there was no going back; he came inside her, falling forward, and there was a moment when he closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck and let himself sink into rest, but neither of them was done, and he soon felt himself hardening inside her again, and she reared back then, wrestling him around until she was on top, gazing down at him with shining eyes, and she rode him with joyful abandon, the sun limning her hair and her face and her beautiful, golden body, sweat glittering and her skin and her strong hands and her eyes and when he came again his eyes rolled back in his head and they both laughed, ringing and free, and _god_ he was in love he was in love and he was going to love her forever, his woman, his slayer, his doom.

“You have to kill me,” he gasped.

She gazed down at him, proudly, eyes wistful. “Not if you kill me first,” she replied.

There was nothing to say to that; he sat up and kissed her, the sunlight suddenly too bright.

Tomorrow, they would go to war.


	10. The Hunting of the Great Lion

The next day, after spending hours resting up for the big battle – well, in bed at least, though they didn’t get much actual sleep until the end – Buffy awoke to Spike tossing and turning restlessly in the morning light. She cuddled up behind him, but he flinched away.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, feeling kind of nurse-ish, but also kind of not, worried but mildly annoyed at the same time, because really, hadn’t they gotten through all this?

“Dunno,” he grunted. “Something wrong with my skin, feels all hot and tight. Hurts.”

Now that Buffy was awake, she was kind of feeling the same way, her cheeks and shoulders and the tops of her breasts and her butt stinging and warm, and she pushed Spike back on the bed, running her eyes over him. “Dammit.”

“Think it’s some kind of mojo? That lion-king got some witches on his side?” Spike rolled over on his side, twisting to look at his ass.

Buffy sighed. “No, Spike. We just got sunburned.”

Spike’s eyes were outraged. “Bugger that. Thought that was the whole point of this dimension’s bloody sun, that it didn’t burn.”

Buffy inspected her decidedly-pink arms, and Spike’s pinker behind. “Well, we did spend almost an entire day naked in the middle of a meadow.”

Spike’s expression changed to one of horror, and he sat up, frantically looking at his crotch before heaving an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Well, at least _that’s_ not burned.” He reached down and gave his (once again erect) erection a loving stroke, sending Buffy a hot, smug little smile. “Must be because it spent all that time… inside.” He stroked again, eyebrows waggling suggestively. “Deep, _deep_ inside.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “God, do you ever stop?”

“Do you want me to stop?” he murmured.

Buffy glared at him for several seconds before giving him a wry smile. “Maybe not,” she conceded, setting her hand on top of his. “But this sunburn makes things… difficult.” She stroked with him, watching his face.

“Things are bloody well _hard_ ,” Spike growled, tumbling her over onto her back.

“Ow ow ow!”

Spike scrambled back. “Sorry, love.”

Buffy crawled towards him. “Let me,” she grinned and pushed him down.

“ _Bugger,_ ” Spike hissed, and it was Buffy’s turn to scramble back.

A rough assessment of their respective sunburns revealed that Spike was definitely worse off. Buffy’s back was fairly red, and she had a pink tinge to her upper body, but her carefully-nurtured tan had protected her from the worst damage. Spike’s white, white skin on the other hand… He was pink almost everywhere, and his back and ass were crimson; the only part unscathed was his lower legs.

They quickly determined that this meant Buffy needed to get on her hands and knees again, and got right to it, because, well. War was coming, but it obviously hadn’t arrived yet, and priorities were priorities. Afterwards, Buffy dampened a sheet and they lay on their stomachs side by side on the bed with the wet fabric draped over them.

“You going to be able to fight?” Buffy asked worriedly as Spike shifted and winced.

Spike shrugged. “Suppose so. Hurts, but I’ve fought through worse. I’m a survivor.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes. “You’re dead. That is the textbook definition of _not a survivor_.”

“ _Un_ dead,” Spike corrected. “And I’ve managed to stay undead for more than a century. Got excellent instincts, I have.”

“Oh yes, excellent instincts,” Buffy teased. “That’s why you keep coming back to Sunnydale, so I can kick your ass.”

He rolled on his side to face her, brushing a thumb over her pink cheek. “Got reasons,” he mumbled, an arrested look on his face.

“Or maybe you just _like_ me kicking your ass.” Buffy curved a hand around his tender behind, carefully, to hint at a significant squeeze without actually causing him agony.

“Maybe I do,” Spike agreed absently, lost in thought for a moment.

“Maybe you just can’t stay away from me,” Buffy continued, airily.

Spike narrowed his eyes at that. “Oh, because you’re irresistible, is that it?”

“You said it, not me,” Buffy grinned.

Spike looked at her for a long moment, and maybe it was the soft morning light, or maybe it was just wishful thinking on her part, but she thought there was something like adoration shining in his eyes. “You’re a bloody menace,” he finally said, voice soft and rough, and shifted closer for a tender kiss.

“That’s me,” Buffy whispered against his lips.

*

It was well into the afternoon when they started to hear noises, distant roars and a rolling, deep sound, like thunder or an earthquake but steady and constant and gradually growing louder, and they hastily rolled off the bed, gingerly donning their respective tattered outfits. Buffy had rigged up sheaths for her looted knives, one on each hip and one on each boot and a couple more strapped to her thighs and back, and Spike took the leftovers, one in each hand and a couple more worked into the pockets of his duster, noting that a battlefield was probably a lousy place to feed at leisure and thus weapons would be handy. The sunburn had faded slightly on both of them; Spike sent a quick thank-you prayer out into the void, to whatever deity looked out for slayers and the vamps who loved them, because rough denim chafing at his severely-sunburned arse would have been sure to sully his enjoyment of the upcoming brawl.

“ _Morituri te salutant,_ ” he said bracingly as they stepped out the door of the little house.

“I have no idea what you just said,” Buffy grinned. “But I hope it means _let’s go kick some demon-lion ass_.”

“Close enough,” he replied, drinking in the sight of her, his warrior woman off to battle. The sun was in her hair again, it was always in her hair, always, and he remembered the rumors that had tempted him back to Sunnydale, the legendary gem that allowed vampires to walk beneath the sun and survive stakes to the heart, the one he’d known would give him just the edge he needed to take the slayer down, and he promised himself that if they ever made it back to good old Sunnyhell, he’d find the bloody thing, just so he wouldn’t have to give up _this_.

His heart was already a loss, but he wanted to keep the sunshine.

But there was an army to face first, and they needed to get someplace defensible before it arrived if they had any intention of surviving, so they set off downstream, to the wide field of flowers with the buttressing rocks, facing north so they could look outwards and not have the sun in their eyes, while they were starting out on high ground.

When the army of beasts arrived at their chosen battleground, Spike was both relieved and worried, because it was thankfully not as large an army as he had pictured – nothing like the hosts of the Great Wars, or even the crowd at Woodstock – but it was still too many, more than he thought he and his slayer could reasonably defeat. He cast a sidelong glance at Buffy. Her adorable face was glowing with resolve, and suddenly she pointed at something. “There!”

Spike followed the line of her finger and saw the lion.

He had ascended a huge flat rock, so that he loomed over the teeming masses of his beastly horde, his mane like shaken gold, his bearing proud and regal, and for just a moment, he looked familiar to Spike, the niggling kind of familiar he’d been ignoring since they came to this bloody place, but a moment later he shook it off. He knew he’d never been to this ridiculous dimension, and he knew if he wanted to live to fuck another day they needed to take down the bloody lion, and it didn’t matter what the situation reminded him of. He’d just have to think about it later.

Buffy’s eyes were riveted on the lion. “The army doesn’t matter,” she said suddenly. “Look how afraid they are.”

Spike squinted to see better, and sure enough, there was a subtle movement to the crowd of beasts, a flinching away from the lion on the rock.

“We don’t have to defeat the whole army,” Buffy continued. “We just have to slay _him_ , and I bet they’ll fall apart.”

“You sure?” Spike asked dubiously. “Seems a bloody big gamble.”

Buffy flashed him a grin, mad and brilliant. “You arguing with my strategy?”

“Not at all,” Spike grinned back. “You’re the general. Point me at what you want me to kill.”

Buffy nodded sharply. “Just help me get to that lion.”

“All right then.”

And at that moment, the army surged forward.

*

They had to leave their sheltering rocks fairly quickly, because the lion showed no sign of entering the fray himself, and they soon figured out that the gibbering horde assaulting them was, while fairly bloodthirsty, not especially skilled. Buffy kept the huge lion in sight at all times, stalking forward, dispatching the beasts that appeared before her and not worrying about behind because Spike was at her back, guarding her flanks and taking care of any enemies she couldn’t see. For the most part he was just a flash of black leather in her peripheral vision, a gleam of bright knives, but every so often he’d mutter something at her, if he needed her to slow down or there was something especially heinous moving in. They had to tag team the centaurs, Spike drawing them off enough that Buffy could slash at their rear legs, sending them tumbling to the ground.

When they neared the great rock, Buffy turned to Spike with a grin; he looked at her like she was the only thing in the world, like the beasts trying to kill them didn’t matter. “Boost me up,” she laughed, and he grinned and knelt and held out his joined hands, and she set one foot and coiled her muscles, and he tossed as she jumped and she landed light as snow on top of the rock. Now that she was up here, she could see the rock was perfectly rectangular and perfectly flat, like a huge table, with the huge lion as a homicidal centerpiece.

The lion regarded her for a long steady moment with his great unchanging eyes, and Buffy felt the ready quips and snarky jokes dry up in her throat, because it seemed to her that there was nothing to be said. And then the lion attacked, and she had to dedicate all her energy to the fight.

She wasn’t used to fighting four-legged demons; even though the lion was huge, he was still closer to the ground than her usual opponents, and she had to recalibrate her kicks and punches for a lower target. The necessary adjustment gave the lion a few good openings; he struck her a solid blow with his paw – no claws, for some weird reason – and she went rolling and nearly tumbled off the edge of the rock. As she flipped back to standing she caught a glimpse of Spike down below, his back to the rock as he continued to fight.

Her knives came in handy then, extending her reach, and she soon had the lion bleeding and snarling, his mane tattered as if it had been shaven by an incompetent, drunk barber. He stumbled and fell, panting on the ground, and looked up at her with malevolent eyes.

“If you kill me I shall return, more powerful than ever,” it snarled. “You shall not rule this land for long!”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Buffy huffed. “I don’t want to rule. I just want to go home.”

And with another blow of her knife, the lion was dead.

*

Spike was beginning to think he wasn’t going to make it through the battle, when a muttering rippled through the crowd, and the huge bear that had been trying to kill him fell back, looking upwards solemnly. Which was a damn good thing. Spike really hated bears. They were… big.

He craned his neck to look upwards, catching the barest glimpse of gold, and for a dizzy moment he thought it was the lion, that the lion had won, and a spasm of grief ripped through him, but then Buffy stepped out right to the edge, and… well.

“The Great Lion is dead!” Buffy shouted. “Not to be all petty about this, but _I win_.” She tossed a bloody knife down from the table; it clattered on the rocky ground.

One of the centaurs stepped forward, hands out in humble supplication. “O great God-Queen! You have defeated the Tyrant Lion! May Your rule be long and benevolent, may Your judgment be wise, may Your justice be…”

“Yeah, whatever,” Buffy interrupted. “Sorry, not my thing. I’m outta here.” She turned and looked down at Spike. “You coming, Spike?”

He followed her as she leapt from the table and stalked back towards the dam; the silent army of beasts parted before them and let them pass.

The second the little wooden door of the dam house closed behind them, Buffy started to shake. Spike caught her up, wrapping his arms around her, and she swore – which she had never done in front of him before, and it was bloody hot, her pretty pink lips shaping obscenity – and then she kissed him hard.

“We did it,” she whispered, eyes shining.

“Bloody well did,” Spike agreed fervently, kissing her again.

And then Buffy’s hands were on him, shoving his duster off and tugging at his ripped T-shirt, and he hissed as her hands shoved down the back of his jeans, because, not healed yet and there had indeed been chafing. Bloody sunburn.

“Still sore?” Buffy asked solicitously.

“A bit,” Spike admitted, continuing to strip Buffy, because bugger if he was going to let a little pain keep him from fucking his warrior woman when she was all hot and bothered from the killing.

Buffy smiled wickedly. “Don’t worry,” she crooned. “Nurse Buffy’ll make it all better.”

And she carefully skinned his jeans over his hips and followed them down to the floor, helping him step out of them before urging him to turn around. She kissed him lightly in the small of his back, laving the red patches on his ass with her tongue, and then bending low to kiss the sensitive backs of his knees, which nearly made him buckle to the ground but he managed to keep it together, hoping, and oh yes, she kissed the side of his hips and turned him again and oh _god_ ducked in to run her tongue up the insides of his thighs and then she was cupping him, pumping him in her hand, watching with fascination for a few strokes before she rose up on her knees and licked delicately at the head, teasing, and his hands were in her hair as she took her sweet time and it was maddening but glorious; she knew him now, knew what he liked and when she finally took him all the way into her mouth, giving him the most delicate, delicious touch of her teeth as she took him in and in, and then she sucked and rippled her tongue against him – ah, that was it, he came in her mouth with a muttered oath and she laughed wickedly and stood, and then it was he who fell to his knees in supplication, and oh yes, her rule was indeed benevolent and just. She set her feet on either side of his hips and when he buried his nose in her, inhaling her, she set one hand on the wall and lifted the other leg, resting it on the edge of the bed and she was spread open to him, and she was already quivering with arousal, pink and damp and swollen, and he hooked his arm around her thigh and played his tongue across her until she was laughing and gasping and clutching at him, and when she came with a jolt, he tugged her right down to straddle him, sliding his cock into her perfect wet heat until they were both kneeling, joined, face to face, eyes meeting eyes, perfectly still, a perfect frozen moment in time.

She stroked a few loose curls back from his face – no styling products here, his curls were untamed and his brown roots showing, but Buffy seemed to like it that way – and kissed him on the forehead, then the mouth. “Welcome home,” she said softly.

Spike gave a little hitch of his hips, drinking in her gasp of pleasure. “Yeah. It’s good to be home.”

Buffy turned her head to look out the window. “Sun’s setting,” she observed casually, clenching around him until he was the one gasping.

“So it is,” Spike agreed, kissing the hollow of Buffy’s throat.

Buffy turned her gaze back to him, eyes teasing. “So, what are we going to do tonight, honey?”

Spike shrugged nonchalantly. “Was thinking of fucking you six ways to Sunday.”

Buffy put on a face of concern. “But your sunburn,” she cooed.

“Bugger my sunburn,” Spike muttered. “We can work around it.”

Face solemn, Buffy started to rise and fall, slowly, sliding along the length of his cock. “Work around it… like this?”

“ _Fuck_ yeah,” Spike said hoarsely, watching.

“But your poor back!” Buffy said sweetly. “I can’t put my hands on it and cause you more pain.” She cupped her own breasts, pinching the nipples with a gasp. “Guess I have to do this.”

Spike leaned back just far enough that he could watch, hands on the ground for support. “Guess you do,” he agreed, joining in the rhythm of her hips with hard thrusts.

Buffy gave him a naughty grin. “Of course, I could always do this,” she purred, sliding one hand down between her legs, delicately spreading herself so she could strum on her clit as she rose and fell, rose and fell, slowly, inexorably, and god, Spike couldn’t tear his eyes away from it, her delicate finger and her throbbing pussy and his cock disappearing into it, all glistening and wet and oh god she was going to kill him because she was keeping him right on the edge there, and then suddenly her face changed and she was slamming into him, hard and fast and oh god she had broken the rhythm, was syncopating and experimenting, two fast and one slow as molasses and he couldn’t hold back and he grabbed her hips and drove up into her and she laughed brokenly and came, curling her body inwards, and he watched her and thrust and thrust and then he was coming too, so hard he nearly blacked out, and he sat up and kissed her tenderly, because she was _his_ god-queen, he would worship Her forever, and they gasped and sighed together until all was still again.

Buffy ran a hand through her tangled hair. “Well,” she laughed breathlessly. “That was one way to Sunday, right?”

Spike grinned evilly. “It was indeed.” He jerked her up against him. “Five to go.”

*

As the sun set, a ragtag, battered group of animals clambered up to the top of the table rock, regarding the body of the Great Lion solemnly.

After a while, a fox sighed. “So, what do we do now?”

Silence.

After several minutes, a bear clapped his huge paws together. “Maybe He’ll come back to life! Didn’t He say something like that? All we have to do is wait, and believe.”

Murmurs of fear and hope rippled through the assemblage.

“And if we don’t wait,” a cheetah pointed out, “and He _does_ come back after all… well, He won’t be happy if we’re not here.”

“Very true,” the fox agreed, shuddering at the thought of His vengeance. There was a flurry of nods, accompanied by a few fearful whimpers.

The animals settled in to wait.


	11. Back on This Side of the Door

“Do we have to bring Spike back?”

Giles desperately fought the urge to roll his eyes, because his eyesight was bad enough already, and his ocular muscles really couldn’t take any excess strain. “Yes, Xander. For the _sixth_ time, the only way to reverse the portal and bring Buffy back from wherever Wil… wherever she was sent is to return all entities who were transported initially. Do pay attention.”

“But isn’t there another spell?” Xander said, proving, once again, that he had not been paying attention.

“Sorry,” Willow shrugged apologetically. “If we don’t use the portal-reversal, we really don’t even know where to start looking for Buffy. We could spend years just trying to figure out which dimension they went to – and that’s years in _our_ time, no knowing how many years in theirs. It’s just too risky.”

Giles did roll his eyes at that, because irony required physical acknowledgment. “Risky like opening a portal to an unknown demon dimension in the first place?” he muttered under his breath, taking a good gulp of his Scotch.

It had been barely twenty-four hours since Buffy and Spike had engaged in their fateful battle on the quad of UC-Sunnydale. Willow’s account of the event had been understandably slightly garbled, but it seemed Buffy had endeavored to rescue someone – a woman who, from Willow’s account, was either a dear friend from high school or the most awful human being in existence – from Spike’s nefarious clutches. Tragically, their ensuing fight had attracted the attention of a wandering demon which had taken exception to the shenanigans, pursuing the pair until it had them cornered in a flimsy utility shed. Willow’s account of her own actions at that point was, he suspected, slightly edited, but according to her, she had attempted to cast a “teeny tiny, harmless little spell” that would send the demon through a “totally safe” dimensional portal, and had been vastly disappointed when it apparently fizzled. Mere moments after she finished the spell, however, she bizarrely claimed a squad of armed commandoes had descended on the demon, subduing it and dragging it off in a net. When she was certain the coast was clear, Willow had cautiously approached the utility shed, only to find it empty and swirling with the residue of dimensional energies.

This, of course, was when she had _finally_ seen fit to contact Giles for advice.

Xander was pacing around the periphery of Giles’s living room, eyes nearly bugging out with tension. “I don’t like it. I just don’t like it. What if Spike’s hungry?” He yanked the collar of his striped pizza-delivery uniform up around his throat. “What if it’s been, like, a hundred years there, and he’s all with the crazy, like Angel?”

Giles sighed, taking another drink. “I rather hope it hasn’t been a hundred years there, seeing as Buffy is human and mortal.”

Xander rounded on Giles. “You think she’s dead?”

Giles removed his glasses, because he just couldn’t stand for Xander’s face to be in focus for another moment. “I think we have no idea what is happening on the other side of the door, but the longer you spend whingeing about it, the more likely it is that what’s happening is something we would not wish on Buffy. Now _do_ shut up.”

Xander shut up. Giles mentally toasted the blissful silence.

“Okey-dokey,” Willow bubbled blithely a few minutes later. “Circle’s all laid out, candles are lit. Just need to get freaky with the chanting.”

“Please do,” Giles said with a sigh of relief, finding a good vantage point on the stairs to look down on the circle with his crossbow. He wasn’t a fool.

Willow started to chant.

*

Buffy had lost count somewhere.

After the second round, she had left Spike gasping on the floor and crawled off to light candles; it would have been easier to stand and walk, she supposed, but she was trying to convey a subtle message, and Spike got the message all right, so round number three was on her hands and knees on the fur rug, because _god_ that was fantastic, and then, when they were curled around each other in the aftermath, Spike had suggested they go outside, since they had taken care of the talking animal menace, and they had bathed laughing in the moonlit pool and made love slowly and sweetly on the cool damp grass and then there had been that thing, and that other thing, and did that count as one or two? And then Spike had suggested something wildly athletic that technically took place in the bed, or at least touching the bed, that Buffy had honestly not thought possible until they were doing it, and, well, it _was_ possible, and she had extrapolated an idea from there which had also turned out to be possible, though probably not for most people, and from that point everything had kind of melted together into a dreamy continuum of sensation, and she wasn’t even tired yet.

Plus, she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be counting anymore.

Also, she wasn’t sure she knew what numbers were anymore.

Buffy had no idea how late it was now – the fresh candles they had lit between their… somethingth and somethingth-plus-one… bout of sunburn-cautious sex had burned low, and she felt deliciously loose and warm, while Spike was soothing and cool against her back, kissing lazy trails along her shoulder. They had ended up in the bed again, though it had been creaking ominously that last time and Buffy was concerned that the sturdy timbers were about to give way.

“Does it still hurt?” Spike said softly, ghosting a hand down her arm where the lion had swatted her.

Buffy stretched experimentally. “Not so much,” she said judiciously. “Just a little.”

“Mmmmm,” he rumbled against her throat. “I’m doing much better myself, as it happens.”

Buffy turned her head to regard him, eyes narrow. “That sounds pointy. Pointed.” She sighed, exasperated at how the English language was apparently on its way out the door with math. “Like you have a point you’re getting at.”

“Clever girl,” Spike whispered, then tugged her around until he was on his back and she was laid out along him.

“Your back….” Buffy began, sitting up, but Spike grinned up at her, something wild in his face.

“You’re the conquering hero,” he said in a dark voice. “Conquer me.”

And there was obviously something Seriously Wrong with her, because even after their unmeasurable sex marathon, his words sent a sudden rush of heat through her, and yes, she felt like some conquest was just what the doctor ordered.

She grinned and grabbed his wrists, shoving them over his head, just roughly enough to show him she meant business. “Like this?” she said sweetly. He groaned incoherently, but the light in his eyes and the twitch of his cock against her was answer enough, and she sat up again, thinking.

Ah. Yes.

She clambered off the bed – whoa, walking was kind of a problem, there! Her legs were all loose and unworky – and rummaged in the little cupboard in the corner until she found what she was looking for.

She heard Spike moving restlessly on the bed behind her. “Not to complain, love, but weren’t we in the middle of…” His voice trailed off as Buffy turned around. “Oh. All right then.” His hand went to his cock, stroking and stroking as Buffy stalked towards the bed, uncoiling the length of rope as she walked.

He was panting by the time she reached him.

“You’re my prisoner,” she said, trying not to feel nervous, trying to sound hard and imperious.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Spike growled, falling back on the bed, body rigid and quivering, which sent a jolt of relief and lust through her.

“Is that commentary, or a request?” Buffy teased, trailing the end of the rope along his torso as she crawled up his body.

“Both,” Spike gritted out, straining up against her, arms stretched overhead as if they were already bound.

Buffy sat astride his stomach, running the rope through her hands, head high, and she suddenly felt full, full of something she couldn’t even define, but it was somehow pure and sacred and bright, and it bubbled out of her in a fit of laughter that left her breathless.

When she finished, Spike was looking up at her, eyebrow quirked sardonically over soft, reverent eyes. “Got that out of your system?” he said, grinning a bit foolishly.

Buffy tossed her hair over her shoulder. “I think so.” She dove forward to grasp his wrists again, the rope rough against her palms, her eyes still locked on his because…because she just couldn’t look away. “Now, where were we?”

“Conquest,” Spike grinned wickedly.

“Oh yeah. That.”

Buffy conquered.

*

Willow’s chanting had reached its peak, and the air in the middle of the candlelit circle was starting to shimmer and waver, like heat waves off asphalt; Giles watched closely as a pair of figures started to fade into existence. They were only blobs of color, vaguely shaped like people, but… yes, that was Buffy’s hair, that shade of blonde, and obviously she hadn’t been gone _too_ long, because Giles was fairly certain most demon dimensions did not carry Clairol.

He frowned. Something was…not right. There was the blonde, and that other patch of paler blondeness must be Spike’s head, but in between…. Well, there was a hint of Buffy’s golden tan and a stretch of Spike’s ghastly pallor, but shouldn’t there be some other colors showing up by now? Black, perhaps? Denim blue?

Anything?

“You’re killing me, Slayer!” Spike’s voice suddenly rang through the room, and the figures started to come into focus.

Was that _rope_?

“See, Xander? Nothing to worry about! Buffy’s got Spike all tied up and…” Willow’s voice trailed off. “Oh. _Oh._ ”

“Oh, _god_ ,” the fuzzy Buffy-shaped blob moaned, arching her back.

“Oh dear Lord.” Giles dropped the crossbow, looking sharply away. There. There was Willow. He could look at Willow.

Xander slapped his hand over his eyes. “Why is Buffy trying to kill Spike naked?” he said in a small, terrified voice.

Willow was still staring in the direction of the circle, her eyes growing huger and huger, and she suddenly let out a little squeak “I think I need to go study. For my classes. That haven’t started yet. Bye!” And she dashed out the door with Oz in tow.

Giles could not bring himself to look again, to verify exactly what was going on, but the sounds coming from the very naked – and apparently oblivious – couple in the center of the circle were fairly self-explanatory.

Xander was determinedly staring at Giles’s wall, cringing slightly at each gasp and moan. “Giles?” he whispered brokenly.

Giles determinedly turned his back to the sight of his slayer once again making Extremely Poor Life Choices. Which he would certainly be discussing with her sometime… later. When she was not naked. Or engaged in dubious activities with yet another vampire. With _Spike_ , for heaven’s sake.

In the middle of his flat.

He resisted the urge to turn back and snatch up his decanter of Scotch, instead ushering Xander quickly and firmly out the door.

The heavy wooden door did not, in fact, do much to muffle the sounds Buffy and Spike were making; Giles set his jaw and kept on going. As they walked, he started to make a list in his head.

_See Xander home._

_Liquor store. Bottle of scotch._

_Hotel room._

He shuddered, thinking of his living room. _Cleaning service_.

 _Make that two bottles of Scotch_.

He tucked the near-catatonic Xander into the passenger seat of his little car and drove off into the night.

*

Spike had vaguely noticed when the surface beneath his stinging back had shifted from soft cotton sheets to cool hard tile, but he didn’t really have any time to dwell on it because _Buffy_ , and so it wasn’t until Buffy collapsed on top of him, momentarily sated, that he actually processed the change in their surroundings.

“Where the bloody hell are we?” he gasped out.

Buffy reared back up, looking around in shock. “Oh. Oh wow!” She fell forward again and kissed him, hard and sweet, eyes shining. “We’re home!”

Spike craned his neck to look around. “This isn’t your place.”

“No, it’s Giles’s apartment.” Buffy’s eyes went wide, and she scrambled off Spike, knocking over a candle that was inexplicably sitting on the floor as she snatched up a pillow from the couch. “Giles!”

Spike sat up, starting to wriggle his hands out of the loose bindings – he would have to teach Buffy a thing or two about knots – and looked around with interest. “Doesn’t seem to be anyone here, love.” His eyes lit upon a decanter of something amber. That looked promising – he rolled to his feet and sauntered over to check it out.

“Huh.” Buffy stopped trying to cover her nakedness. “I wonder where he is.”

Spike sniffed at the bottle. Glenfiddich. Perfect. He poured a goodly amount into one of the tumblers conveniently arranged there, sighing blissfully as he took his first sip. “Dunno.”

Buffy’s face melted into a wide grin again. “But we’re home!” Her face suddenly fell, and she looked at him with wide, naked eyes. “We’re home,” she repeated dully. “I have to kill you.”

Spike took another sip of Scotch, regarding her levelly. “That you do,” he agreed.

Buffy looked at him for a long moment, then gave him a wry, determined smile. “Tomorrow,” she said firmly. “I’ll kill you tomorrow.”

“Not if I kill you first,” Spike said adoringly, lifting his glass in a toast.

It was good to be home.

 

THE END

 

 


End file.
